"3rd of December"

The elevator door opened with a cheerful ding, and Steve grinned as Phil stepped into the room.

"Hi, Phil," he said. "Need some help with that box?"

Phil raised his eyebrows. "It isn't heavy, and I'm not an invalid. I'm perfectly capable of carrying a box of recipe books."

Steve pursed his lips and looked down at the designs he was fiddling with. "I didn't mean it like that. I was just being polite. And I didn't know whether you'd want to spread things out or not. You know, on the kitchen counter…" He trailed off, slightly irritated and also a bit hurt. Phil sighed.

"I apologise, Steve," he said. "It's been a… difficult day."

"I thought you were okay?"

"Turns out that 'okay' is subjective." He placed the box where Steve indicated. "Let's get started on this. I know it's movie night tonight, and I'd hate to keep you from that."

"You're welcome to join us. You're staying here at the moment, aren't you?"

"Part of the reason it's been one of those days. Stark keeps insisting on it, and I keep refusing."

"You should consider it. It'll only be for Christmas."

Phil opened the box. "I brought the Christmas cookbook, the Halloween one—"

"Wow, your mom was thorough."

"The Easter one, and the New Year one." Phil placed all four on the countertop. "There were a few other recipes in random books, and the rest of the ones she left to me. I copied them down. I also brought this." He lifted out a book stand. "In case you didn't already have a recipe book holder."

"Great," Steve said, looking it over. "This is perfect."

"Keep it. I don't have enough time to do much cooking, and anything I cook on a regular basis is in here." He tapped the side of his head. "Anytime you want to borrow any of my other books, just ask."

"That's nice of you. Thanks. That sounds even better than borrowing cookbooks from the library."

Phil smiled, and placed the photocopied recipes on top of the other books. He lifted the empty box from the barstool and set it on the floor, out of the way. Then they perched next to each other and looked over the loose recipes first.

"Chocolate-filled caramels?" Steve asked, holding up the first one.

"I know it's ambitious," Phil said. "I've never made them before. But some of the other recipes I've made time and time again, so they're fool-proof. Rumballs I know like the back of my hand, and the shortbread's easy. It's cutting out the shapes that takes the most time. Here." He lifted out the page from the bottom of the pile. It was a picture of cookie cutters. "All the Christmas ones I have."

"Wow." Steve touched the sheet, and accidentally brushed Phil's hand. He caught the page before it could fall. "Sorry. These are great. Stars, a stocking, Santa, reindeer, tree, angel… it's incredible. I had no idea how many kinds were out there."

"There are a lot more. You can even get kits to make gingerbread houses."

Steve whistled. "I don't know why anyone would want more. These are perfect, just as they are. Are we going to ice them?"

"My one downfall is icing," Phil confessed. "But if you're any good, go for it. Either that, or you could trace lines on them. Give the angels faces; put tinsel on the trees. There are shops which sell stamps, but I'm sure you could do a much better job yourself."

"I'm sure we can figure out frosting together," Steve said. He put the photograph back own. "What other recipes have you got?"

Phil pushed aside the sheets, and picked up the Christmas cookbook. "We can use some of these on the day, for ordinary meals and snacks for the table. But since we're going with things to put in tins, there's shortbread shapes. A similar recipe is in the New Year book. With that one, you press the dough into a round tin, and then cut it into wedges after it's been baked and cooled off. You can press glace cherries onto the edges before cooking. It's a good recipe. Not practical for what we want to do, but maybe something for New Year. If I stay for that."

"Please do," Steve said, and he looked down at Phil. "We'd hate for you to go. I know you have important work to do, but it'd make us happy if you stayed."

"I'll see. Any of us could be called at any time, even Christmas Day."

"It's okay," Steve said. "I'm going to keep praying that we can all be together for Christmas. With any luck, the supervillains will celebrate at the same time, and just… not attack anyone."

"Is it bad that that could be the best Christmas present ever?" Phil said, still flipping through the pages.

"It's not bad at all."

Phil hummed 'Winter Wonderland' as they went through each of the books. They found a good triple chocolate fudge recipe in the Easter book, which Phil said gave him toothache just thinking about it. There were also some tips on working with chocolate, which Steve wrote down. There were more candy recipes in the Halloween book, and some good icing recipes. Steve was determined to try making it, at least. They'd do a test run with some sugar cookies first.

"What about chocolate chip cookies?" he asked, flipping through the Christmas book again. "There isn't a rec—"

"In that pile," Phil said, nodding towards the photocopies. Steve fought not to blush, embarrassed that he'd forgotten about them. In his defence – and it wasn't much of a defence – he'd been too caught up talking with Phil to remember things like that.

"I'll just—"

"I'm closer," Phil said, and he handed the pages to Steve, who'd gone to reach around. As Steve sat back, he brushed against Phil again, this time his back. Phil didn't seem to notice, which was a relief. But it made Steve feel warm.

"Thanks," he said, and he sifted through until he found a couple of recipes. One of them had coconut.

"They're good. The dough can be a bit wet, which makes it harder for the chocolate chips to stick. But they're fine once they're baked. My half-sister came up with them."

"You have a half-sister?" Steve really didn't know much about Phil at all. He'd have to change that.

"From my father's second marriage. Mom was number three. Dad never really had much luck with women. Rachel's my only sibling. She's four years older than me."

"You father really didn't have much luck, did he? Well, except that he had you. Your mom did, that is."

Phil smiled, looking a little confused, and Steve couldn't blame him. "Thank you."

"So do you have any favourites?" Steve asked. "No one in the team has told me about any allergies since we started living together."

"Pepper is allergic to strawberries, Tony is allergic to most nuts, and Bruce is a vegetarian when he can afford to be."

"Oh, I know about Bruce. Tony hasn't mentioned the nut thing. I'm glad you told me."

"Are you allergic?"

"I used to be allergic to a lot of things, but the serum's taken care of that."

"Good," Phil said. "All right. What have you written so far?"

"Uh…" Steve showed him. "Not much."

"No, that's good. We'll use the books as much as we can. I have digital copies of them, but it's much easier to use the book stand. And I prefer to use paper recipes."

"Me too," Steve said. He smiled. "Okay. What are we making, and when?"

"The absolute latest should be about eleven or twelve days before Christmas. We should make the candies then, as well as practise making iced cookies. Shortbread lasts awhile. Brownies and fudge need to be made closer to time. We'll have to plan contingencies, in case work gets in the way."

"I'll get started on the cards," Steve said. "They shouldn't take long to put together. It's mainly getting the supplies together and preparing them. We also need to find boxes."

"I'm aware of that. Do you prefer tin or cardboard?"

"The kid from the Depression inside of me says tin; it can be used again and again."

"Then we'll do that," Phil said. "Some of the better cardboard boxes are so nice that you wouldn't want to throw them out anyway."

"When should we get on to that?"

Phil looked thoughtful for a minute, and then hopped down from the barstool.

"Let's go scouting for them now," he said. "We can get a feel for what's out there, and then give it some thought. There's a store down the road, and another three blocks from here. We can check them out at least. You know what the cards and tags will look like." He lifted the box back onto the stool. "You can find something which complements them."

Steve nodded, and went to fetch his wallet. When he returned, he found that Phil had packed the books and papers away.

"Are you taking them home?" he asked. Phil glanced up at him.

"I'm leaving them here," he said. "This will keep them all in the one place, and you can go through and make a list of what we need to buy."

"Sounds good. So." Steve walked up to Phil. "Let's get going."

I'm torn over what size boxes to get. You know, in real life. Steve and Phil will apparently be going all out over this, which means they can get bigger boxes, and just get individual ones. I don't have that luxury, although I have more time than they do to get stuff done. But then again, I'm spending that time writing.

I fully intended to have this all written before I began posting. Ha. But I'm determined to make sure that I have each chapter out on time, even if it means having to write on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day to get it done. As I'm writing this, we don't have internet. Hopefully, by the time it's posted, we will.

Please review! And do tell me to get on with writing this.