Flashbacks

Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas

Christmas day brings hope and tears. Shawn invites Jon into his world. Another cookie miscalculation. Jon, Audrey, and a ring.

Have yourself a merry little Christmas. Let your heart be light.

From now on our troubles will be out of sight.

Have yourself a merry little Christmas. Make the Yuletide gay.

From now on our troubles will be miles away.

Here we are as in olden days, happy golden days of yore.

Faithful friends who are dear to us, gather near to us once more.

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Christmas Day

The next morning, Jon was the first to wake up and he found himself in a peculiar position. During the night, he had moved from the end of the couch where he'd fallen asleep to the middle.

He wasn't sure how he got there.

His feet were still resting on a pillow on the coffee table, and he was still under the blanket. He started to sit up only to find it difficult to do with two heads resting against his chest.

Shawn and Audrey were laying on either side of him, slightly stretched out, and using him as a pillow. Shawn had his arms wrapped around him and Audrey had hers wrapped around them both. As much he wanted to move- his lower back was not happy with the position it had been kept in all night- he was afraid that moving would disturb them.

He also didn't want the moment broken.

Jon leaned his cheek against Audrey's head, slowly stroking her hair and watching the snow fall through the window that was to the left of the tree. Christmas morning was finally here, and the realization left him with an empty feeling inside.

After today, it would all be over. They'd have to go back to the way things were before.

Could they? Could things go back to being the same after the month they'd had?

In years past, he would have been desperate to have a Christmas like Eli was having. He thought about his best friend's description of the party he was at. Just a short time ago he would have been the one dragging Eli to those bachelor parties, but now as his "wife and kid" slept in his arms, he found it hard to see what the appeal in that had been.

How that was better than this.

Not for the first time, he wondered why he fought against family life so hard.

If only he could keep it.

His thoughts drifted to the "wife". Looking down at the sleeping ballerina snuggled against him a deep affection for her swelled in his heart and made him uncomfortable.

Everything was different with her, and he didn't understand why.

Aside from her looks, she wasn't his type.

He tended to go for loud, talkative women closer to his own age who had careers and cutthroat ambition to make it to the top. The partiers. The non-marrying types. The independent ones.

The women he ended up with were another matter, but they were not the starry-eyed, the "world is full of wonder" ones who were just as happy at home as they were in their careers.