The first snowfall came late that year, nearly two weeks into December, and for once Henry didn't have to wheedle her into spending the afternoon in the kitchen to bake Christmas cookies, as family tradition dictated.

Regina thumbed through her catalogue of recipe cards and pulled the slightly more dog-eared ones that marked her and Henry's favorites, and she was halfway through asking Robin and Roland what they wanted to make before she caught their quietly blank faces - both sets of eyes deep with curiosity - and realized they couldn't begin to tell her.

(She remembered Henry, knee-high and hopelessly cowlicked, holding up recipe after recipe to her and saying, "This one too!" And she had, simply to win another smile from him as she lifted him to the counter to help her pour flour and sugar and molasses into a new bowl.)

She might guess at their tastes, now, learning them slowly as she was - cloying sweetness for Roland, something subtler and darker for Robin - but it didn't seem fair to choose so, to deny them their own discovery of the season and everything that came with it.

Roland leaned close to his father's ear, and in a carrying whisper asked, "What's Christmas cookies?"

"Er…"

Robin looked to her for help, and there was an idea, one that raised a ready smile to her lips while she pulled the rest of the cookie recipes free of their box.

Showing was better than telling, and to do it properly, well, they'd just have to bake them all.

The four of them made a good team, with Robin minding the oven (holding trays out for her to declare done or in need of another two minutes) and washing up while Regina mixed dough and the boys decorated with a sense of gleeful abandon.

Soon the counters were lined with armies of snowmen and reindeer that had been Jackson Pollack-ed with all colors of sprinkles, mounds of snickerdoodles and Mexican wedding cakes, and the silver wrappers of chocolates that Henry was now helping Roland press into the middle of a sheet of peanut butter balls.

It was excessive, Regina knew, but she was swept up in it willingly, the kitchen too full of warmth and laughter to feel anything but light. It was enough to see Roland wide-eyed at this new kind of magic, at the never-ending variety of shapes and flavors before him - and Robin too, though he hid his enthusiasm better, tucked away in one flexible corner of his mouth that had a tendency to betray him when he thought no one was looking.

She had powdered sugar streaked up the backs of her hands and, apparently, across her cheekbone, an oversight that Robin remedied with a soft stroke of his thumb before touching it to his lips, his tongue, and sampling the sweetness there.

When he smiled roguishly at her, Regina rather wished the sugar had clung to a more sensitive part (a lower part) of her than her cheek, unleashing a stream of tantalizing thoughts that were entirely inappropriate for her to be entertaining while there were still children in the room.

"I think that's enough for today," she said, weakly, and was heartened when no one put up much protest.

"If you're going to sneak cookies, at least make sure you close the containers tightly when you're finished."

Henry glanced at the opened tin she held up to him accusingly and shrugged. "Wasn't me."

Regina frowned in thought. If it wasn't Henry… perhaps her cookie thief was rather smaller in stature than she had assumed, one with a charming set of dimples and a mop of unruly curls that really should be trimmed back before he began to resemble a sheepdog - and, it seemed, sticky fingers and a taste for raspberry jam thumbprints.

Caught red-handed, quite literally.

She was tempted to overlook it when, not-so-long before dinner that evening, Roland sidled out of the kitchen with a tell-tale trail of crumbs along his lower lip, but she pulled him gently aside and reminded him of the rules of the house, of asking before taking, until he looked properly abashed even as his tongue sought out the last sweet remnant of his theft at the bottom of his lip.

"By the time Christmas comes you'll be sick of them," she teased, as Roland vehemently shook his head and swore that he could eat cookies every day of the year. He did, however, promise to leave some out for Santa in exchange for other gifts.

Regina laughed. "Well, I'm sure Santa will appreciate your generosity, Roland. You two share quite the sweet tooth, don't you?"

Her words proved truer than even she had thought when, after waking in the late hours of the night to a half-empty bed, she wandered down to the kitchen in search of Robin and discovered that this particular streak of naughtiness, the surreptitious piracy of her best desserts, ran in the family.

"Stealing cookies?" she asked from the doorway, smirking as Robin flinched with a mixture of surprise and guilt. "That's a sure way to get coal in your stocking."

He turned to her, all innocence, and spread his empty hands, refusing to be caught as willingly as his son. "And what evidence have you against me, my love?"

Unrepentant to the last, then, and (she bent to his pretence, letting him win just this once) she met him halfway when he leaned in to steal a kiss, his hands sliding down and down until she broke with the pleasure of it, shuddering against the arms that held her upright.

He tasted, remarkably, like gingersnaps.