InsaneJournal

Sam brushed his fingertips over one the cookies to make sure they had cooled enough, and then examined the decorating supplies with a hint of trepidation. “I hope frosting is more forgiving than like, paint. Art is not my strong suit even when I’m sober.”

He paused, considered, and then picked up the red frosting to start on the candy cane shaped cookie in front of him. Very tentatively, he drew a red line on it.

--

"The best part about Christmas cookies," Buffy grinned as she watched him. "Is they taste equally good and they're all getting eaten so if they aren't perfect, it's alright, we won't feel bad eating them then."

She watched Sam for a moment, and then reached for some green icing. "Mom used to always outline them?" She tried this, a line around what would probably be a holly leaf, although she was wondering if she could mix the green and the red without them actually blending and becoming a mess. She frowned slightly in concentration, one line of green outlining the leaf as she did it. "It's like… coloring maybe?"

Buffy looked up to him, and for a moment she was quiet, smiling a little. A date wasn't something she'd had for a while, and it was almost making up for the fact that there wasn't anyone here from home. "Did you ever do this before?"

--

Sam watched what she was doing, and then tried it himself, drawing another red line parallel to the first and then connecting them at the ends. He tried coloring it in, but it just looked like a bunch of squiggles. “Kinda like this?”

He glanced over at her, a corner of his mouth lifted in a smile. “No. My family was always in hotel rooms on Christmas. If we had cookies they were store-bought.” He did his best to smooth some of the red squiggles, which worked better than he expected, but he definitely brushed some of it past the outline. Coloring outside the lines, he thought, amused. “I’ve known people since then that liked to bake, but whenever I helped, it was mainly with the dough and cookie cutters part.”

--

Buffy grinned. It was squiggles, but they were cute squiggles. Or maybe that was the guy who was making them that was cute. Cause, he really was. Buffy's cheeks felt warm and she became very interested in filling in the green on her holly leaf, which mostly did work. "I think it's perfect," she told him, and she put her icing down and picked her up. "I think, those green sugar things on this one, cause then it'll sparkle."

And really, if one was doing sugar cookies for Christmas, why should one skimp on the sugar? She reached for the green, and tried shaking them evenly across the leaf, even though they still clumped in one space a little. "I'm really cool with introducing you to this Christmas tradition," she told him. "Mom and I always did it when I was little. I haven't really had time as much like…" she paused, the leaf would need a holly berry and she wasn't quite certain how to accomplish that. "I mean, fighting vampires doesn't always leave time for high Christmas, mom was more likely to just make them herself and me eat them. I guess you know about the fighting taking up time though."

--

Sam’s half-smile widened into a grin as well, and he was distracted for a few moments looking at her and her handiwork. “Can’t go wrong with sugar and sparkle, right?”

He did his best to concentrate enough to make his next red square “line”, to make it a little cleaner, but somehow one of the lines still wiggled. But his squiggles on the inside smoothed out a little easier this time. Maybe he could correct the part outside of the lines when he put the white on. “Oh, I know all about fighting getting in the way of… well, everything. Have I told you the story about the time my brother and I got held hostage by some winter solstice gods that were mad about Christmas taking all their worshippers?”

--

"It's pretty much impossible, the cookie gods declare it," Buffy laughed, "although I have no idea how to do holly now, I'm pretty sure if I just add a red icing dot it's gonna start looking like that screaming guy painting? Like, that gone Christmas."

She leaned in, elbows on the counter and she watched him work, glancing up at his face every so often, and then down to the lines. "So, wait no, what? There's a way to spend a Christmas! What were they trying to get from you as hostages?"

--

“Maybe if you try to go for screaming guy painting, you’ll somehow end up with holly,” Sam suggested, and laughed too. Partly because Buffy was already laughing, and partly because his backwards logic was much funnier with so much rum and sugar in his system.

He started on his one last red line, figuring he could do the rest in with white, but he couldn’t help but glance at her as he worked, especially since she was so focused on him at the moment. His icing job suffered from it, but he had mostly stopped caring. “Hostages was the wrong word. They were taking sacrifices and we got in their way, so they tied us up and tortured us. Pulled out one of my fingernails.”

Oh, he’d really made a mess of this particular red part -- and coincidentally, ironically, part of it had gotten on his fingernails. “We ended up having to stab them with parts of a Christmas tree because we didn’t have any stakes. That felt wrong.”

--

"Oh, ow!" Buffy exclaimed immediately. "That's like the worst solstice holiday god thing ever!"

She reached for the red icing that Sam had been using and decided that she'd give it a try. Screaming guy into holly and ivy or whatever. It was entirely possible, if not entirely logical, but who needed logic when sugar was involved. "I mostly feel as if that was sad for the tree, because it could have lived a wholesome life with ornaments and tinsel, and like, presents under it, and instead it got sacrificed to the fingernail stealing solstice grinches. That's like a horror movie right there."

She glanced over at his candy cane. "That's good, I've got a coloring book in there if you want to practice coloring between the lines before your next one," she grinned up at him impishly.

--

“Sure was,” Sam agreed. “I was already having a hard time enjoying Christmas, but that didn’t help.” It had been Dean’s last Christmas before going to hell, but they’d managed a nice one in the end. One that involved egg nog just like this particular night, but not cookies. “You’re right, though. The tree definitely deserved better.”

He handed over the red frosting willingly and reached for the white instead. Almost immediately he ended up smearing some of it into the red lines. “I probably should have practiced with the coloring book before,” he laughed, enjoying the mischief in her face. “Now I’m not sure how much of this is lack of skill and how much of it is rum.”

But he managed to complete the candy cane cookie -- in that it was effectively covered in red and white frosting -- and he considered his options for the next one. Since he was still holding white frosting, he chose a snowman. “What kind of monster stuff happened for you around Christmas?”

--

"Always blame the rum, probably," Buffy declared, putting her screaming holly leaf down onto the plate and making a face. "You know, that sort of looks like a Christmas impressionistic … something yeah? Let's say yes."

In another location it might have been strange to find someone who spent their Christmases fighting demons with their friends and family, but it wasn't so strange here, maybe. Even so, it was nice to not have to think twice about what stories she was telling and leaving bits out, or whether or not they'd be believed.

"One year all of the Christmas trees in the lot died because the First Evil was setting up underneath Sunnydale. It was after Angel. We weren't dating then - it was after he'd come back… and it was just a really strange Christmas. The First was basically changing their appearance to look like different people Angelus had killed, and trying to really haunt Angel, but not in a happy Scrooge does good way, more of a we want to get rid of you, sort of way. We got snow that year. In Sunnydale, it was pretty much a miracle, you know?"

--

“We’ll just never ever do this without rum,” Sam agreed, “And then my artistic skill will never be blamed.”

It was fun, doing something very normal for Christmas while swapping stories about how abnormal their lives were. It summed up his life here, really. Here, normal and abnormal merged in a way that they never could have done at home. He just needed downtime and a lot of people who understood the life, and then they could all build lives together that were somewhere in between. He had always liked that, especially since coming to Tumbleweed, because it allowed for a lot more normal than Mt. Weather.

He managed to somewhat trace the outline of the snowman’s body as he listened. “Sounds like the trees always lose,” he commented. An interesting parallel between the two stories. “Is the First Evil like… the serpent from the Garden of Eden? Or Eve? She was pretty awful at home. Or something less biblical?”

It was only after he finished speaking that he realized he’d outlined the snowman’s hat in white as well, and had already started coloring it in. Hastily he tried to swipe it off.

--

"Agreed," Buffy laughed. "I mean, arguably they'll taste good whatever they look like? We can always say they're modern Christmas art."

That was a thing, probably. Her mother would have known, and it was a reminder that she missed her. But at the same time, this was something she would have loved. She'd have probably said something silly to Sam, or embarrassed Buffy in some way or another.

"You could put a red ribbon on it," Buffy pointed at the hat, although now Sam had mostly gotten the icing off, and she was this close to bursting into giggles.

She picked up her own snowman, although she'd have to wait until he was done with the white, and for a moment she did, the cookie in her fingers as she considered his question. "Not entirely? Cause I mean, the Serpent was like lucifer right? Which was an angel? I don't know in your world, I never really ran into him, so I don't know if he existed exactly, but the First Evil was before demons and humans - just - like, from before time itself. Also really melodramatic at times, but I guess if you're 'Evil', you've got to entertain yourself somehow?"

--

“Maybe we should just throw all conventional design out the window entirely and jump right into the modern art,” Sam said. But he had already gone in pretty far on the traditional white body on his snowman. “I could… draw red zig zags? Cover him with all different colored sparkles?”

He handed over the white frosting and smoothed in the part of the body that he’d meant to decorate in white. He reached for the red again, and tried making a red hat-bow thing on the head, which just turned into a red blob. He made two red eyes, because why not, and then set the frosting aside altogether to grab some sugar sparkles.

“That sounds kind of like the Darkness,” he said. “Something God and Lucifer and Michael locked away before the beginning of time. The last thing I remember from home, actually, is the Darkness breaking free.” He sprinkled one color and then another on the snowman’s body. “I don’t know much else about it, but I’m sure it’ll be melodramatic somehow.”

--

"It definitely seems similar," Buffy nodded. "Like, it was beyond demons and the demons were kinda scared of it, honestly. Wasn't a great thrill ride to fight and I was glad that it seemed to go away when it failed with Angel, you know?" She'd read enough of the Wiki to know it came back later… but that wasn't something she'd lived.

Buffy took this opportunity to reach for the green icing and give her Snowman what might have been a green striped sweater, or might have just been icing barfed all over a snowman. It was a little unclear, but when she reached for the red and green Christmas tree sprinkles and added them, it seemed to be a special type of Cookie Horror. She giggled. "It's an Ugly Sweater party for Snowmen," and she bounced her snowman over to meet Sam's snowman, which might be demonic, if she were being honest.

And that led without any thought whatsoever, to her rummaging in amongst the hot chocolate supplies for a cinnamon stick which she pushed to her Snowman. No one could eat that stick but: "slayer Snowman in an Ugly Christmas Sweater," she maintained seriousness for about five seconds after she said this, and then she giggled again.

--

“That’s actually kinda an amazing parallel,” Sam said, fascinated. “From what I’ve read, Dean’s gonna help the Darkness bury the hatchet with God and then they’ll both just go off to… wherever they go.” He waved a hand vaguely, because he really had no idea where such immortal beings went if they were not on Earth, and presumably not Heaven or Hell either.

He nudged his demonic snowman towards Buffy’s snowman, and laughed at the two of them. “I think your Slayer snowman should probably stake the demonic snowman before it eats all the other cookies.”

--

"What if it goes poof?" She looked up at him, teasing, and maybe a little bit daring. Because well, if she smacked it with the cinnamon stick, it probably would be in pieces which wasn't exactly vampire dust, but close enough. She hit it lightly, not hard enough to do any serious damage really, before she put Slayer Snowman down.

"It's interesting that we have something similar in both worlds. Like, there are these sort of differences, but I feel like there are some similarities. I'm sure there are demon hunters in my world. I wonder if there's something like the Slayers in yours?"

--

“If it doesn’t go poof, it might kill all the other cookies,” Sam pointed out. It was ridiculous talking about his cookie like it was actually demonic, like it could actually do anything, but the red eyes were really something. Also, he was definitely in a tipsy, silly, Christmassy, date-excitement mood. “It’s one cookie gone or several. Seems worth the risk.”

And voila, the demonic cookie hadn’t disappeared. He reached for the black frosting and added black dots over the red eyes. But: “Somehow I made it worse.”

He glanced over at her. “As far as I know, we don’t have Slayers. It’d be nice if we did, though.”

--

"That's it, you're banned from any additional cookies," Buffy collapsed into giggles. "Maybe we should give up on any sort of realism whatsoever? Because I feel as if we're not really very good at it. Or!" she raised a hand up dramatically. "Maybe we had too much cider stuff."

It occurred to her then, and she reached for the snowman with the now even worse black eyes, and she bit off his head. She nodded, humming approval. "See, that's how we do the Slaying round here. Cause Tumbleweed, we have slayers," she tilted the rest of the snowman to Sam for him to try if he wanted.

--

“Definitely had too much cider stuff,” Sam said, laughing too. Her laugh was contagious. “So am I banned or is realism banned? Or both?”

He leaned over and took a bite of the possibly-no-longer-demonic snowman. After chewing and swallowing, he suggested, “We could just really quickly cover all of them in as much frosting as quickly as possible and then get to the eating.”

Because by his count they had each only decorated two cookies and there were many, many more.

--

"Surreallism." Buffy quipped quickly. "Isn't that the... " she stopped. It seemed like that was the right word for what she was thinking, but she'd kinda maybe sorta slept through that part of Art History. "You know, five minutes, twenty-five cookies. How many can we get done by then?"

She reached immediately for the red, not bothering to check a clock even though she'd just set them a time. Thankfully they'd left parchment paper underneath the cookie racks so it was catching the worst of the red icing that was sliding between the cracks of the cookies. And you really couldn't do just red, there had to be white too.

--

“Maybe,” Sam offered, “Depends if it gives us a glimpse into our subconscious. But I think my subconscious is saying the more frosting the better, and it’s pretty easy to symbolize that, so…”

He, too, had taken art history in college (and yet again the main purpose of it had ended up being for trying to impress girls) but it was hard to think about it seriously at the moment. He reached for the green, and set about dumping and swirling as much of it on each cookie as he could. He started with the cookies that Buffy hadn’t gotten to yet, figuring they could meet in the middle.

He was certainly succeeding at covering cookies in frosting, but a lot of it was also ending up on his hands.

--

Buffy laughed at this. She'd forgotten the subconscious thing which - "Wow, that sounds like Professor Walsh as much as it sounds like art theory, but the lest said about her the better!"

She'd managed to get red on her hands and now some of the white came out pink - oh well - and when she reached to set it down and grab sprinkles instead she managed to get red from one of the Masterpiece Surrealist Cookies all on her hands. Oops, well. It should go somewhere. With a grin, she took her red sticky fingers and reached over to draw an S on Sam's hand.

--

“Don’t ask about Professor Walsh,” Sam said with mock seriousness. “Noted.”

He had gotten green into some of the red and white cookies, and was about to switch to black when she frosted his hand. He laughed and playfully swiped at her hand with the green frosting on his fingers, and then at her cheek.

--

Buffy laughed, ducking, but it was too late - there was a definite streak of frosting on her cheeks, she could feel it. "I'm going to look like an elf at this rate!" She told him. "That wasn't in the Christmas Eve plan. Santa has all the elves he needs. Presumably."

Their cookies definitely were nothing story-book picture worthy. If anything, they looked a lot like a Pinterest Fail on one of those websites. But hey, they could always say that was what they'd been going for.

She put one hand (carefully) on her hip. "Clean up your mess," she tilted a cheek towards him.

--

Sam laughed. “You’re the one who started decorating me instead of the cookies.”

But he reached for a paper towel to wipe frosting off his hands, and then reached out with clean fingers to swipe the frosting gently off of her cheek. After a brief moment of hesitation, he then leaned down to gently kiss the spot where the frosting had been; hopefully he had been reading the signals right and that was what she’d been asking for. He lifted his head again and smiled at her. “There. Better?”

--

Buffy dipped her head with a quick smile at the clean fingers, and the kiss, and looked up. Gosh he was tall and she… really wasn't. Oh well - it was attractive, kind of like he could -theoretically anyway, wrap himself around her and she'd be all wrapped up. Okay, and now she was thinking about being all wrapped up in him, and her cheeks were flushing slightly.

"I'll have to check the mirror," she offered, trying to be cool, and feeling a little anything but. It'd been a while since she'd had a guy around. A lot of a while, really - because there'd been Riley, but then Atlantis, and then here, for nearly a year. "But, yeah," she grinned. "We should uhm, you know, like, the cookies…"

But she really wasn't looking at them. They were probably post-modern art miracles or something, but they'd taste good no matter how they looked, and really they hadn't been the point exactly. Sam had been the point of this whole evening. Something to do with him, and to make him smile, and he was smiling, so success.

--

Sam grinned at her, ducked his head slightly and ran a hand through his hair; he was a little flustered too. He looked around briefly for a mirror, but since they were in the kitchen, he didn’t see one nearby. But she was already moving forward, so he looked back at her.

“Eat them?” he suggested as the end to her sentence. “I think they’re ready for eating. Most of them have frosting, anyway.” He grabbed a handful of sparkly candies and sprinkled them over a bunch of cookies, and then picked one up, offering it to her. He held it at a level where she could use her hands to take it from him or she could lean in to take a bite.

--

She wiped her hands on some paper towels, still grinning and feeling a little ridiculous, but eating cookies were what they'd made them for, and she couldn't entirely resist one stuck in front of her like that. She leaned forward, bit the snowman's head off, and looked up impishly as she reached out to take the rest of it with her hands.

"I think it's time for eggnog, eating our cookies, and like, I don't know Charlie Brown's Christmas?"

--

“Yes,” Sam agreed. “Although I think it might be time to stop spiking the egg nog soon? Sober up and get sugar high instead?”

He didn’t know precisely where this night was going, and he wasn’t trying to push it in any particular direction, but he did know that he didn’t want anything to happen just because they were drunk.

--

"Non-spiked egg nog coming up," Buffy agreed easily, popping another bite of snowman in her mouth. "We don't want to go all B.C. on Christmas eve after all." She gave him a quick smile, a little shy, a little pleased, and then she pulled a plate out for him. "You get the cookies, I'll get the egg nog, and Merry Christmas to us."