A/N~ I recently realized that Spencer is pretty OOC in this fic, at least I think he is. Let me know if you think differently, please - it would be a huge confidence booster! Anyways, I'm hoping that this chapter will help explain why he might be OOC.

Parts of this chapter were also in response to an argument my friend and I had about Spencer Reid and his reactions to flirting… so interpret that as you wish, I know that I did.

As I'm finishing writing this, the rest of my family is watching Trolls… it's quite terrifying.

Here's a Christmas special for you all! But of course, since this is Ariel and Spencer, Christmas isn't going to be the normal kind…

Ariel's P.O.V.

"You remind me of the babe." I sang along with David Bowie as Spencer and I decorated the tree. Michael was lying on a blanket in the middle of the living room, wiggling his little arms and legs in the air. He was wearing a little green onesie with a large red skull and crossbones in the middle of it, with matching socks and an elf hat.

"What babe?" Spencer fired back, singing along with the goblins. He was wearing another pair of mismatched Christmas socks - one was blue with white and gold snowflakes, and the other was green with little red reindeer all over it. He wore a hideous sweater, and had tried his best to get me to wear one too, but I refused. Instead, I had put on my elf dress. It was a little green number with a pleated skirt, black belt with a big golden buckle, and a white peter pan collar.

"The babe with the power." I answered, copying the movements of the Goblin King to make my husband laugh. He did, and grabbed ahold of my waist at the same time, spinning me around so that we were face-to-face.

"What power?" he whispered, but I was done playing by then and pulled him in for a kiss. This was the side of my husband that not many people saw - the fun, playful side. The part of him that could reduce me into a blushing schoolgirl with one well-timed kiss. Most people only saw the version of him that he meant for them to see - that of the socially awkward, stuttering genius. And while it was always entertaining to see people react to that side of him, I really didn't like it as much. Because when people only knew that side of him, they tended to see him as a walking, talking computer that didn't have any emotions or feelings. And that wasn't who he was - he was so much more. But our family knew the truth about him, and that was what counted.

The real Spencer Reid - my Spencer Reid - was shy around those who didn't know him, with a hidden sense of humor and a heart of gold. He hid behind his statistics and facts, but when it came down to it he was always there for any of his family.

I cut off my own train of thought when Spence started to pull his lips away from mine, and I nearly whimpered.

"What about Michael?" he asked, and I pulled away for a second.

"He's not paying attention." I said, and pulled him closer. He didn't have a counter-argument, so I continued moving my lips down along his jawline, and then followed the muscles in his neck down to the hollow of his collarbone where he was especially sensitive. I couldn't help but smirk when I saw him bite his lip, and his muffled curses nearly made me laugh out loud. That was one of the few ways that I knew that could get my sweet genius to lose his cool and collected mask.

I was about to suggest that we put Michael down for a nap and continue in our bedroom, but then Spencer's phone started to ring.

I sighed as he pulled away and flipped the phone open. "Dr. Reid." he said, and I could just barely hear Morgan on the other end.

"You better have a good reason for interrupting, Derek." I called out, and I could hear him laughing on the other end.

"Actually, I was about to say the same thing, Morgan." Spencer said, and there was a stunned sort of silence on the other end that had both of us laughing. "What is it?" Spence finally asked.

"We've got a case." Morgan said, sounding disappointed.

I was surprised, and by the look on Spence's face I could tell that he was, too. "But it's only four days until Christmas!" he said, and Morgan sighed.

"Tell that to the UnSubs, kid." was his reply.

Spencer shot me an apologetic look even as he answered, "Alright, I'll be there in half an hour." he hung up the phone then, and turned to look at me. "I'm sorry." he said, but I just leaned up and kissed his cheek.

"Come on, let's get you packed up and ready to go." I said, turning and picking up Michael before heading upstairs to our bedroom.

8888

Spencer's P.O.V.

I walked into the conference room a little over half an hour later after storing my go-bag under my desk. Needless to say, I was irritated. This was our first Christmas as a family, and there was a chance that I was going to miss it because of this case.

Everyone else was already sitting down, except for JJ, who was standing in front of the monitor.

"Sorry I'm late." I apologized. "It's still hard to leave Michael every time…"

"Just try not to let it happen again." Hotch warned, and I nodded as I took my seat.

JJ began the briefing then. "Garner, North Carolina needs our help. They've had two missing children cases in the past six days. Evan Kinch, and Robert Leone, both in seventh grade at the local middle school."

"Two?" Morgan asked, surprised. "Why weren't we called in for the first one?"

"No one was left to report them missing." JJ said gravely, pulling crime scene photos up on the screen for us to look at. The scenes were even more terrible than usual - blood everywhere, with the parents chained to their beds, their skin torn to shreds. Cases like these always left me hating my eidetic memory, because these were the kinds of things that I would never forget.

"Coroner's reports have confirmed when their parents were killed." I noted as I flipped through the file.

"Three days apart." Rossi noted. "How did they die?" he asked.

"Exsanguination." I replied, finding it in the coroner's report. "They bled out."

"Wheels up in thirty." Hotch said, closing his file and standing up. The rest of us followed him out of the conference room, going down to the bullpen to grab our bags and anything else we might need for the trip.

"How's Ariel?" Prentiss asked, coming over and picking the only photo I had on my desk. It was of my wife and son a few days after Michael was born. In it, Ariel was holding Michael in our bed, right after she had woken up in the morning.

"She's pretty upset, actually." I admitted as I pulled the picture out of her hands and put it into my go-bag. "It's our first Christmas as a family, you know? And I might miss it."

"Hey, pretty boy." Morgan said, and I turned to look at him. "We'll make sure you get home in time." he said, giving me a quick smile.

"Come on then." Rossi said, coming down from his office to join us in the bullpen. "Let's get moving."

8888

The plane ride was as tense as all of the ones involving children seemed to be. There was a brief meeting about the case where we tried to work out some of the details,but it didn't last too long before we all retreated to our separate corners.

JJ slid into the seat next to me. "What're you doing, Spence?" she asked. "Normally by now you'd be flipping through a book so fast you'd be making a breeze." she joked.

"It's a book on sign language." I told her, showing her the inside of the book. "Ariel and I are learning it so that Michael doesn't have to use hearing aids all of the time if he doesn't want to."

She smiled. "That's great, Spence! I'm guessing that this means that he can get hearing aids then?"

I nodded. "The doctor said that once he's six months old, we can get him fitted for his first pair."

"Hey kid." Morgan said, leaning over from where he sat across the aisle. "I've been meaning to ask you where I can find books on that."

"You want to learn sign language?" I asked, and he nodded.

"Of course." he answered, as if it should have been obvious. "I need to be able to talk to my godson, don't I?" I smiled at that, nodding my head.

"I guess you're right." I said, putting the book down. "Okay, so the first thing to learn is fingerspelling. Once you know that, you can basically sign anything, it just takes a little bit of time…"

8888

We made it to Garner in a little bit over two hours.

"Agent Jareau?" Someone asked as soon as we came into the sheriff's station.

"That's me." JJ said as she crossed over to the woman who had called her name. "You must be Sheriff Jenkins." JJ said, holding her hand out for the other woman to shake. Jenkins was a younger woman with short red hair and green eyes, and a petite frame.

"This is my boss, SSA Aaron Hotchner. And this is the rest of the team - SSAs David Rossi, Derek Morgan, Emily Prentiss, and Dr. Spencer Reid."

She turned to give us all handshakes with a polite smile on her face until she got to me. I just gave her my usual awkward wave, and a little smirk played across her face. "Nice to meet you all." she said, and something about her had both Morgan and Prentiss trying not to laugh.

"I set up a room for y'all to use, just like you instructed." she said, leading us towards the room.

"Why weren't we called in sooner?" Hotch asked the question that we were all dying to know the answer to.

The woman didn't even look back as she answered. "It's an election year, and our esteemed mayor didn't want people to think that we couldn't handle things. Y'all know how politics can be."

As soon as we got inside, I moved over to one of the tables, pulling the maps that they had provided over even as I pulled several different colored markers out of my bag. I bent over the map and started to work on the geographical profile using the information that was in the file that JJ had originally handed out. Meanwhile, the rest of the team started to work on the rest of the profile.

It took me a few minutes to realize that someone was staring at me, and it was only a few minutes later that I looked up.

Sheriff Jenkins seemed startled once she realized that I had caught her staring. "Sorry," she said, not really sounding sorry at all. "But what are you doing?"

"I'm, ah, I'm making a geographical profile." I explained.

She looked interested. "How do you do that?" she asked, moving closer - a bit too close for my sensibilities. By this point, I was starting to have an idea as to what Morgan and Prentiss had found so funny earlier - although I was still hoping that I was wrong. I moved over another foot, trying to make it look like I was trying to reach another part of the map, while in reality I was trying to get away from Sheriff Jenkins.

"What I do is, I, um, I take the information from, uh, from the files that your office sent us. Then I can, I can extrapolate that data and analyze it to, ah, to determine the most likely place that the UnSub lives in."

"Wow." she said, sounding impressed. "And you do that all on your own?"

I shrugged. "I find it relaxing, actually." I admitted. I quickly realized that that was the wrong thing to say, though, as her face practically lit up with unholy glee.

"I can think of something else that's much more relaxing." she practically purred, and the noise that came out of my mouth in response wasn't human.

"I think I need some coffee." I said quickly, looking up from what I was doing to see the rest of my team staring at me in amusement. "Anyone else?"

"Yeah, sure thing, kid." Surprisingly, Rossi was the first one to say anything. "Come on, I'll drive."

There were a few minutes of awkward silence at first. I still didn't know Rossi well enough yet to know what to talk about with him.

"So how's Michael doing?" Rossi asked, sounding almost wistful.

"He's um, he's doing really well." I told him. "He's nearly sleeping through the night at this point, which is surprising."

"And your wife?"

"Ariel?" I asked, and he shot me a look.

"Of course, who else would I be talking about?"

"She's uh, she's fine." That part wasn't exactly true. Neither one of us could remember the last time that we been together for this long without anything happening. Not that either of us minded, but Ariel was starting to get a bit antsy. Not that I blamed her. She had always been a free spirit, always wanting to be on the move. That was one of the things that I loved the most about her.

8888

Ariel's P.O.V.

The Polar Express played in the background as I made dinner. I was planning on stopping by the BAU with Michael later on and seeing how Penny was doing.

Then the phone rang.

"Reid residence." I said, picking it up and resting it between my ear and shoulder.

"Hello." I smiled when I heard my husband's voice coming through the speaker. "How's everything going?"

"Everything's great!" I said happily. "How goes the case?"

"Nothing yet." Spencer informed me, and I could hear the sadness in his voice. I hated how any case affected him, but ones that involved children were always the worst. The worst part of it all was that there was nothing that I could do to make things any better.

"You'll figure it out." I said softly as I stirred the pasta sauce that I was making. "You always do."

"I guess you're right." he said softly.

"Are you going to be home in time for Christmas?" I asked, trying to get his attention off of the case for a minute. "Because I'd prefer to not miss out on Christmas morning sex."

Spencer laughed nervously, and I froze for a second. "Please tell me I'm not on speakerphone." I begged, and this time his laughter was a bit more relaxed.

"Don't worry, you're not. Rossi says hello, by the way."

"Well you'd better be home by Christmas morning, or else the only present that you'll be getting is coal." I teased him.

"Coal…" Spencer breathed out, and I was confused. I was about to ask him what he was going on about, but I didn't get a chance to. "Ariel, remind me to kiss you senseless when we get back - I think you may have just given us a break in the case."

"You're welcome?" I said hesitantly, but all that was left was the dialtone.

8888

Meanwhile, back at the sheriff's station…

The team was debating aspects of the profile when Sheriff Jenkins approached them again. Hotch wouldn't have even known that she was on the way over if not for the amused looks that appeared on Prentiss and Morgan's faces.

"Maybe he's some sort of injustice collector?" Prentiss posited, flipping through the file in her hand. "He was wronged by someone in the family, and is now taking revenge?"

"No." Morgan disagreed. "This would be overkill for an injustice collector. Plus, they would just go after the person that messed with them, not their whole family." Hotch heard the sound of pages being shuffled through before anyone said anything else. "What I want to know is what this guy is doing with the kids."

"Can I help you, sheriff?" he heard Morgan ask. Hotch knew that he shouldn't be listening in, but he couldn't help himself.

"Yeah, actually. Maybe you can. I was wondering what y'all could tell me about your Dr. Reid." That surprised Hotch. He had known that the sheriff had her eye on the young genius, but had thought that the woman would have at least had enough tact to wait until after they had finished with the case… or even better, to not ask at all.

"Um, I can tell you that he's married." Prentiss said, and Hotch could feel his lips twitching up into a smile at her irritated tone.

"Is he… happy?" she asked, and at that point Hotch turned around, completely shocked. He had thought that the woman would have given up once she heard that Reid was married, but it was as if that thought didn't even occur to her.

Morgan was holding onto the tabletop so tightly that his knuckles had turned white, and it looked as though it was taking all of Prentiss's willpower to keep from saying anything.

Of course, that was when Reid and Rossi came back in, laden with festive cups from Starbucks.

"Guys, I think I figured something out!" Reid said excitedly, and Morgan could barely hide his laughter when the young genius handed off the tray of coffees to the sheriff, who looked slightly disappointed. He didn't seem to notice, though, as he was too busy grabbing a marker and writing on the board, talking as he went.

"Ariel made a joke about coal -"

"Why, pretty boy?" Morgan asked. "Have you been bad this year?" The only response that Morgan got was a faint blush that probably would have been ten times more entertaining if he had been facing us instead of the board.

"And it got me thinking about this." Reid said, ignoring the older agent to the best of his ability. He finally moved away from the board, showing off the single word that he had written:

Krampus.

8888

Spencer's P.O.V.

We gathered all of the offices in the bullpen, ready to deliver the profile.

"This UnSub is most likely a white male in his thirties." Morgan began. "Judging by the amount of preparation and the level of organization, he works a nice, high-paying, stable job. He is also obsessed with the story of Krampus."

That was when I picked it up. "Krampus is a folk character that is one of the companions of Saint Nicholas in Austria, Bavaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Hungary, Slovenia and Northern Italy. He is traditionally considered to be the anti-Claus, and instead of bringing presents to good children, he kidnaps the bad children and tortures them with whips and chains."

"The UnSub is twisting this myth, however." Prentiss continued. "Instead of punishing the children, he appears to be punishing the parents. This suggests someone with a deep hatred for parents, and who most likely wouldn't be one. Look for men who are single, and refuse to have anything to do with parents in general."

"We don't know what he's doing with the children." Morgan said. "But we don't think that he's hurting them - from what we know of the parents, these kids lived in abusive homes, so it may be that he sees himself as saving them somehow. So look for someone who likes to help kids, but hates dealing with other adults."

"Alright, that's everything." Hotch said.

8888

It took us another day or two before we caught a single break in the case. But once we did, it took us all of a few hours before we had the UnSub in custody. The children were only a little worse for wear, and they would be fine after a few days.

8888

Spencer's P.O.V.

We were getting ready to leave, and I had called Ariel to let her know that we were heading back, but I had gotten the answering machine. I hung up the phone, disappointed.

"Is everything okay?" A voice asked, and I turned around to see Sheriff Jenkins walking towards me.

"Yeah, um, yeah." I said, looking at my phone sadly. "I just, uh, I just miss my wife, is all."

"Oh, is that all?" she said breezily. "So, I was wondering if you'd want to call me sometime."

I looked at her in confusion, then realized what she was getting at. "I have a wife, Sheriff Jenkins." I reminded her. "And a son at home, whom I love very much. So I would appreciate it if you would leave me alone."

"Oh come on, Doctor Reid." she said coyly. "Loosen up a little.

"You don't even know me." I said coldly. "And if you don't mind, I'd like to leave now."

8888

Hotch's P.O.V.

I was just about to start on the paperwork for the last case when Reid came into my office.

"Hey Hotch." he said, and I put down my pen.

"What can I do for you?" I asked, and he gave a little smile. It still amazed me how different Reid seemed now. Only three years ago, I had known that his wife existed, but had never met her before, and so I had never gotten a chance to see the side of Spencer Reid that I knew now. With her and Michael, he was almost a completely different man than he was at work. He was still clumsy and awkward at times, but much more sure of himself and his abilities. At work, that confidence only showed when he was spouting out statistics and facts. But now that the team knew his secret, it was like he was more willing to let us see that side of him as well - that of the confident and snarky man that he truly was. It was amazing.

"You can come and have dinner with Ariel and I." he said, and I was about to decline when he added, "Michael's been dying to see you again."

"Michael's only two months old, Reid." I reminded him, and he nodded.

"I know that." he said, "but that doesn't mean that he doesn't want to see you."

I thought about it for a moment or two before making up my mind. "Alright." I said as I stood up from behind my desk. "I'm coming."

The look that flashed across Reid's face could have only been described as pure relief. "Alright." he said quietly, then moved back to leave my office. "Let me just go and grab my bag and then we can leave."

8888

Ariel's P.O.V.

It was around six on Christmas Eve when I heard the front door open. I smiled, looking at the little boy who sat at the kitchen table, decorating Christmas cookies with a single-minded determination.

"Guess who's here?" I asked him, and he smiled.

"Unca Spence?" he asked, and I nodded.

"But someone else is here too." I said, hoping that I was right. Spencer had called me when the team first got back to the Bureau, and I had told him about our visitor, suggesting that he bring someone else along with him. The only question was if he had succeeded in getting the man in question to come.

"Who is it?" the little brown-eyed boy asked, looking up at me. I picked him up from where he sat, trying not to laugh at the bits of icing and sprinkles that were stuck to his face.

"Let's go see!" I told him, and Jack Hotchner giggled excitedly, nodding his head. We crept over to the hallway, with Jack giggling the entire way.

Spencer and Aaron were standing in the hallway, and we jumped out at them. "Look who it is, Jack!" I said excitedly, and he started to try and squirm out of my grasp.

"Daddy!" he cried happily, and Hotch looked up in surprise.

"Hey, kiddo!" Hotch said happily, coming over and picking his son up from where he sat perched on my hip. "What are you doing here?"

"Haley dropped him off earlier - she had to wrap p-r-e-s-e-n-t-s." I explained quietly, and Hotch nodded in understanding.

"Gotcha." he said, and then we just stood there awkwardly for a minute. Things had been kind of awkward ever since he and Haley had split up, but nothing could really ruin Christmas. So I simply pulled my husband in for a kiss that he gladly reciprocated. We finished when I bit his lip and he pulled away, looking wounded.

I just shrugged, smirking a bit. "What can I say?" I asked. "Love bites, and so do I."

"You should write that one down." he told me, and I nodded.

"Come and see our son." I said excitedly, pulling him towards the living room where MIchael lay in his swing.

A/N~ This was my first time writing an original case - let me know what you all think of it!

Happy Holidays to everyone out there! I love you all so much for reading, following, favouriting, reviewing, and generally enjoying this story.

Thank you to ahowell1993, tannerose5, KirkSauber, Momochan77, tlcroft, and gossamermouse101 for their reviews!

Also, I most likely won't have anything up this Tuesday. Things have been really hectic lately, so I haven't had a chance to write recently. I'll try my best, but I can make no promises.