Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto or any characters therein. Or Christmas.
A/N: This one is a Christmas gift to devotedtodreams and CeruleanCypher, for being the fabulous people that they are! XD Enjoy!
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Gingerbread
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"Now boys, remember-what are the rules for making a gingerbread house?"
"Clean up after yourself," eight-year-old Sasuke responded dutifully.
Mikoto smiled. "Good. What else?"
"Don't eat all the candy," Itachi said in a monotone.
"Excellent. And…?" She went expectantly silent. Three heads swiveled toward the fourth person in the room.
Shisui sighed heavily before muttering, "No holding Itachi down and covering his face in frosting."
"Very good. Have fun." And she left the boys to their own devices.
"All righty then." Shisui rubbed his hands together. "First order of business: What kind of gingerbread house are we making here?"
"Perhaps a house?" Itachi suggested with delicate sarcasm.
Shisui stuck his tongue out at his cousin, leading Itachi to wonder (not for the first time) if the older boy really was fifteen.
"We could make a church," Sasuke offered.
"It's definitely an idea, squirt," Shisui observed thoughtfully. "I was just wondering if maybe we could do something that you don't normally see. Like…" He trailed off, deep in thought.
Sasuke spoke up again. "A castle?"
Shisui snapped his fingers. "Exactly! A castle it is!"
"Don't you think that's a bit beyond our skill range?" Itachi asked skeptically.
"Nonsense," was the airy reply. "Besides-either win, or lose spectacularly! That's my motto! Now let's get started!"
"Well, Mother already baked plenty of gingerbread in different shapes," Itachi noted. "Apparently she didn't want to run the risk of us burning the village down by using the oven. So all we have to do is build and decorate."
"Um…Like this?" a hopeful little voice asked.
Shisui and Itachi turned to see that Sasuke had already frosted together a wide rectangle to serve as the base, and appeared to be in the middle of constructing a drawbridge as well.
Itachi's disbelieving "When did he…?" was cut off by Shisui's incredulous, "And they call you the prodigy, Itachi!"
And so it went. In a surprisingly small amount of time, the three put together a relatively large rectangular structure. Sasuke frosted the finished drawbridge to the front of the castle-in-progress, and then they began to discuss décor.
"We've got to have flags," Shisui mused.
"Yeah. And turrets," Sasuke put in, sounding excited.
"What about windows?" Itachi asked, eyeing the gingerbread creation critically.
Shisui rolled his eyes. "Fine, fine. Now how about something creative?"
The prodigy frowned. "You two are doing a fine job of getting in over our heads all by yourselves," he replied mulishly. "It's my job to make sure people can tell what this thing is in the end."
"Who cares what other people think? C'mon, Itachi, rack that abnormally big brain of yours. There's gotta be something imaginative floating around in there!"
"…Give me the jellybeans."
"Huh?"
"You heard me. I am taking control of the jellybeans." Itachi reached over and grabbed the bag, then turned his back so the others couldn't see what he was doing.
Shrugging, Shisui turned back to Sasuke. "What now?"
"We could..um..start on the turrets?"
"That works. We can save the flags for after." He grinned. "Let's make some turrets."
Easier said than done. It quickly became apparent that Mikoto had made gingerbread in every shape imaginable-except for a cone. Or anything even resembling a cone, actually.
"Now what?" Sasuke asked.
"Simple," Shisui responded, unfazed. "We make a cone ourselves."
Sasuke was about to agree when Itachi's voice came from his corner. "Start up the oven," he warned, "and I will be forced to carry out my civic duty as an Anbu captain and arrest you."
"You wouldn't arrest your own brother!" Shisui shot back.
"Of course not. I'd say he was coerced into it and put all the blame on you."
"Jerk," Shisui muttered, but mentally scrapped the baking idea. "Well, the icing dries wicked fast; maybe we can make a cone out of that."
"It's worth a try," Sasuke shrugged.
So Shisui ripped some cardboard off the box of candy, glued it into a cone shape, and he and Sasuke promptly covered it with icing. The icing dried in forty seconds flat. That was when they ran into another roadblock.
"Shisui-itoko?"
"Yeah?"
"It's not gonna come off."
Shisui gave the cone a look and had to resist the urge to slap himself in the head. I'm such an idiot sometimes…Of course the frosting would stick to the cardboard; that should have been a given. Great. Way to go, Shisui.
"This wasn't very well thought-out," he said aloud with a sigh. "We'll just have to come up with another plan."
They ended up taking some smaller squares of gingerbread and making a few cubes to stick on top of the towers.
"Cubed turrets," Sasuke said interestedly. "That's something you don't see every day.."
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Once Itachi saw fit to rejoin them, the trio decided to get started on covering the castle with frosting. Which should have been a simple task-and it was, until they found themselves running low on icing when the structure was only half done.
"That's weird," a frowning Sasuke said decisively.
Itachi, on the other hand, had already formed a hypothesis on the cause of the situation and decided to test it. Glancing sideways, he suggested they take a lunch break.
"Uh…You guys go on ahead. I'm not feeling that hungry. I'll stay here and, ah, watch the castle. Make sure it doesn't fall over, you know?" Shisui suggested with false brightness.
"Not hungry, hm?" Itachi repeated dryly. "I wonder why that could be."
A few seconds passed in silence before Shisui groaned. "Alright, alright, I give up. I may have eaten a spoonful of frosting." A pause. "Or two." Another pause, and then a muttered "Or five."
Itachi shook his head. "Luckily, my mother is blessed with the gift of foresight. She made extra frosting; it's in the freezer."
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"Heads up, little cousin!"
Itachi's head went up instinctively; he was just in time to see a makeshift snowball coming right at his face. Then:
Splat.
Frosting, Itachi realized, looking at Shisui murderously.
"Y'know, Itachi," Shisui chuckled, "somehow I can just tell that you're shooting me the Death Glare you've perfected so well. But it would be a lot more effective if you weren't covered in icing."
"Shisui-itoko," Sasuke said, frowning, "Mother told you not to cover nii-san in frosting, remember?"
"Correction. Aunt Mikoto told me not to hold your brother down and cover him with frosting."
"..Oh." Sasuke shrugged. "That's okay then."
A perfectly rounded, spherical blob of icing flew through the air with lightning speed and hit Shisui hard in the face.
"Owtch!" he yelped, before realizing the culprit had several more frosting-balls where that came from and diving behind the gingerbread castle.
Itachi deftly tossed a second ball, which splattered against the gingerbread.
"Frosting fight!" Sasuke cheered, and started making icing blobs of his own.
This, Itachi realized with a sigh, cannot possibly end well.
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Less than an hour later, the three battered veterans of a vicious frosting war stood in a demolished kitchen. The fight had finally concluded in a draw when they had all run out of ammunition.
"Well, we did manage to get the castle covered," Shisui observed, scraping some icing off of his cheek and eating it.
True enough; the castle had served as a blockade for several different people as the fight wore on. Miraculously it hadn't broken, and as such was now veritably covered in artistic off-white splotches.
"Yes," Itachi said irritably, still trying to get copious amounts of frosting out of his hair. "The castle, along with everything else."
Also true. Looking around, the trio was forced to take in the full extent of the carnage. Icing was splattered everywhere-the floor was covered to the point where you had to do a bizarre sort of dance in order to get anywhere without getting it on your feet; the walls had basically been repainted with the stuff; not to mention the ceiling..well, they preferred not even to think about the ceiling, which was difficult considering it kept dripping frosting.
And then there was the candy which had been meant for decorating the gingerbread. Somehow it had gotten dragged into the fight as well, the result of which was millions of little round candies making walking anywhere a health hazard, chocolate pieces slowly melting on any given flat surface, and shattered bits of candy canes that were simply everywhere.
"So, um, is the castle done?" Sasuke piped up, hoping to change the subject.
"Well, hang on." Shisui turned to Itachi. "What is it you were working on?"
A strange expression came over Itachi's face; half of him was still rooted in disapproval over the whole mess, but the other half was apparently proud of his creation. Reaching carefully into his pocket, he produced a small stained glass window made entirely out of jellybeans.
"Whoa," Sasuke breathed, examining it. "That's awesome, aniki."
"Thank you, Sasuke."
"See? I told you there was creativity in there somewhere," Shisui said, smacking Itachi playfully upside the head.
Itachi attached the jellybean window to the front of the castle using some of the frosting stuck in his hair. The three stood back and admired their handiwork.
"Merry Christmas, aniki," Sasuke said spontaneously. "And Shisui-itoko."
"You too, squirt."
"Merry Christmas, otouto."
A minute or two passed in silence. Then Sasuke spoke up again.
"So…who's going to clean this up?"
Shisui glanced upward thoughtfully, then whispered something in Sasuke's ear. The boy nodded, grinning.
"Good question," a suspicious Itachi noted. "Who is going to clean this up?"
"Well," Shisui replied, a cheeky smile on his face, "you're the responsible one!"
And he and Sasuke bolted.
Which lead to an irate Itachi chasing both of them around the compound, pelting them with gumdrops with deadly accuracy.
If anyone wondered why the Uchiha prodigy was chasing his brother and best friend around, throwing candy at them, all three covered in frosting…they decided it was probably best not to ask.
.:Fin:.
A/N: Yay for fluff and happy endings! Things I must get back into the swing of writing!
I hope you enjoyed (particularly you two, dd and CC).
MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!!
-Sky