This story was written for Asia1st! Merry Christmas!
Title: Gingerbread Houses
Author: little.miss.sarcasm
Rated: K+
Genre: Romance/Fluff
Pairing: Troyella
Summary: "See?" Troy asked with a smile. "I told you I wouldn't eat them!"
Disclaimer: I do not own HSM or the characters but I do own the blunt plot and the utterly stupid words that come with the story. This will be short but it'll have a cute ending. I hope… Things don't always come out as I want them to.
….
The house was picture perfect. A neat lawn covered in a blanket of sparkling white snow. Blue shutters pristine and opened wide for the world to look inside the picturesque house. A tall bare oak tree stood high in the yard, snow covering its empty limbs, one strong limb hoisting up a tire swing. A curving path way led up the front red door with a wreath plastered to its front.
The winds howled at the windows, swirling snowflakes in an endless twirl in the air and past the glass. Inside the house, a fire was crackling merrily, Christmas tunes gently wafted out of speakers, mixing with the incoherent screams of two little children at the kitchen table.
"I want to add the gumdrops!" Owen yelled, tugging the tube of icing from his sister's hands. She tugged back, squeezing some of the white frosting down the tube's sides.
"No! I want to!" Caroline screamed, her dark brown braids smacking her face as she shook her head angrily.
"Me!"
"Me!"
"Me!"
"Me!"
"Me." Troy took the icing tube out of his children's hands, succeeding in smothering his hands in the sticky white globs running along the sides. Both children started to protest and Troy shook his head, turning to Gabriella. "Help me!"
"Caroline, Owen," Gabriella said sternly, walking over to the kids and standing next to her husband. "That's enough."
"But, Mom!" Caroline whined.
"No, buts, Caroline," Gabriella reprimanded. "It's your brother's turn to add something and he chose the gumdrops. You'll get your turn next and you can do whatever you want to." Caroline grudgingly agreed and Troy handed his son the tube. Owen took it greedily and plastered a red gumdrop on the peak of the roof.
"I'm starting to think letting them make this gingerbread house was a mistake," Troy whispered to his wife, watching as Caroline attempted to eat the gumdrops before her older brother got the chance to attach them to the house.
Gabriella swatted Troy's shoulder. "Don't be such a Grinch," She said. "It's Christmas!"
"I prefer 'Scrooge' if you don't mind," Troy deadpanned. "And Christmas or not, this is just going to lead to a huge headache."
"You and I made a gingerbread house when we were younger, remember?" Gabriella asked, leaning her head onto her husband's chest. Troy wrapped his arms around her and put his head on her shoulder, closing his eyes.
"How could I forget?"
….
"Stop eating the house!"
"Oh, it's one window. What's it going to hurt?"
"I swear, you take the meaning of 'eating us out of house and home' to a new level."
Troy and Gabriella were huddled around a small gingerbread house at Gabriella's kitchen counter, colorful candy spilled across the tops. Troy reached into the mound of candy, pulled out a strand of licorice and chewed off the end.
"Yum," He said. "Windows!"
Gabriella laughed and shook her head. She bent her body low, biting her tongue in concentration. She gently squeezed a tube of icing, curving a pathway onto the candied front yard. She smiled as she pulled away, admiring her handiwork.
Troy plastered some candy canes into the front yard. He cleverly tied a fruit ring and a piece of licorice to the cane's bend. He flicked the device, watching it swing back and forth lazily, and declared, "Look! A tire swing!"
"Clever," Gabriella said. She put a green fruit ring onto the front door and went to work. She applied bits and pieces of candy strategically over the cookie house. Troy watched in awe the house slowly became a masterpiece of sugar.
"I swear, only you can be so anal about a gingerbread house," He said, chewing on a gumdrop happily. Gabriella rolled her eyes at the teenaged boy.
"I want it to look nice," She said coolly, rolling up her sleeves to the crook of her elbows. "Is that a crime?"
"Not at all," Troy said. "It should be, but it's not."
"You stink, did you know that?"
"Yeah."
Again, an eye roll made its way to Gabriella's dazzling brown eyes. She bit her lip again as she started squeezing blue shutters onto the house. Troy wasn't sure what he was supposed to do anymore. He put together the house incorrectly, putting the sides on the roof and the roof on the sides. He tried to put the house together using real glue, and had succeeded in eating three of the four windows Gabriella had made. Gingerbread houses weren't his thing. Food was his thing. Eating was his thing. Gingerbread houses weren't.
"You want to take a break, Da Vinci?" Troy asked sarcastically as Gabriella added an intricate design to her roof with the icing. Gabriella laughed and turned around, one hand on her hip, one hand lazily holding the icing tube.
"You know, I'm planning on what our house will look like in twenty years!" She said, not catching her blurb in speech.
Our house? Troy thought. Did she just say our house?
"Of course, we'd need a family…" Gabriella began absentmindedly, added a gumdrop to the chimney. Troy smiled and took four gingerbread men. He ate of the leg of one and Gabriella gasped, "Troy! Stop eating us!"
"Well, we want kids, don't we?" Troy asked, not even realizing that he was, in fact, joining Gabriella and planning their future together. He smiled as he nibbled off the other leg and Gabriella shook her head, laughing.
"If our children ever found out you tried to eat them…"
Minutes later, Gabriella had finished decorating the house and Troy had put the family on the front lawn. Gabriella took one look at the family and exploded with laughter, clutching her stomach, tears running down her cheeks. Her companion joined her and they both laughed until they were pink in the face.
The gingerbread people looked as if a candy volcano had thrown up and landed on them. Then they were too stupid to move, so it threw up again and covered them. Hardly an inch of the brown cookie was visible; not even a centimeter wasn't covered up with candy.
"Okay, all joking aside," Gabriella said. "What're these… monsters named?"
"Well, that one," Troy said, pointing at one of the bigger cookies with wild licorice hair. "Is you. And that one, with the orange gumball in my hand- that's supposed to be a basketball-"
"No kidding?" Gabriella rolled her eyes again.
"That one's me. And those are our two kids, Owen and Caroline."
"Owen and Caroline?" Gabriella asked, her eyebrows raised.
"Yup!" Troy said, nodding his head stupidly.
"Cute… and look!" She exclaimed, pointing at them. "They aren't eaten!"
Troy took a bite out of Caroline's head.
"Now they are."
In the other room, a cry of triumph was heard, but not paid attention to. Lucy Bolton turned to Maria Montez and said, "I told you that the gingerbread house would work! Pay up!"
Maria handed Lucy a crisp twenty-dollar bill. "Fine. But I don't want my grandchildren eaten. Restrain your son from becoming a cannibal, please."
….
Troy smiled at Gabriella, his hands around her waist, his head on her shoulder. They looked at their subsided children, the two plastering the gumdrops on together.
"See?" Troy asked with a smile. "I told you I wouldn't eat them."
Fin.
Author's Note: Merry Christmas and New Year, Asia1st!