AN: I was writing a series of unedited holiday drabbles on tumblr and this one turned out well so I'm adding it to this collection too.
Christmas Cookies
It was icy and windy and Jem had thought taking the subway back to the apartment in New York in December would be a good idea. His feet were wet and the snow had started melting into his pant legs.
When he got in the apartment door he dropped the mittens and the scarf in a heap on the floor. The cat glared at the snow on the rug and then at the rest of him.
"You're whiter than usual," he said. There was white powder all over Church's head and shoulders. Jem brushed some off and it clung to his damp fingers.
Church meowed and rubbed a generous amount of the stuff onto his pants where it clung. Flour not some ingredient for magic. Which in most households would be a good thing but Tessa was good at magic and she was not good at baking.
The apartment didn't smell like burning. Yet. Jem dropped his soggy jacket with the other things on the floor and made a silent vow to spend the next Christmas someplace warmer and brighter.
He found Tessa in the kitchen with a bowl of goo in front of her and a grimace on her face as she poked it with a spoon.
"What are you making?" He asked crossing the room to stand near her and look down at the concoction which actually smelled delicious which made it an improvement over her attempt at brownies a few months earlier that hadn't smelled of chocolate at all.
"Christmas cookies, you know the ones you cut into shapes and put frosting on?" She said. "You're wet."
"And cold," he said. "They look ok?"
"You're supposed to roll it out flat," she said lifting a spoonful of dough and letting it run off the spoon. "Mine's a little soupy."
"Why cookies?" Jem asked.
"Lucie used to make cookies with her children every year. It always seemed such a nice tradition. They'd cut them into shapes and everyone would mix a different colour of icing and the kids would make a mess of them then insist you try one of every colour," she said with a faraway smile.
"Obviously, Lucie could follow a recipe better than you can," Jem said.
"Shut up," Tessa told him but she was still smiling. She turned and put her hands against his cheeks which were still red from the cold. There was some ingredient smudged on her chin and he rubbed that off with his thumb.
"I caught myself imagining yesterday," she said in a very soft voice. "And I'm not ready to do more than imagine it but I wanted to know," there was a long pause and he let her think it through without interrupting, "I guess I wanted to know if you had ever imagined it."
"Imagined what?" He asked.
"What our children might be like," she said it gently like it was a secret or something she thought might anger him. He went still and then blinked. He hadn't imagined it. Ever. It had never been an option.
"No, I've never imagined it," he told her just as gently as he pulled her a little closer, "but I'd like to."
"They'll have your eyes," she said.
"And curls like this," he played with a piece of her hair. They whispered like they were telling each other secrets. A smile was spreading across his face and he'd forgotten that he was cold and tired, "I could teach them how to play the violin. We could get them those tiny little child violins that come in colours."
"And they'll grow up and become rock guitarists instead," she said.
"I could support that," he said which made her laugh.
That Christmas was a little different from the ones that they had shared before. As they set up the tree, as they walked by the shops, as they attended parties, as they did all the things they'd come to think of as normal they were imagining sharing it with someone else. Someone who hadn't been born yet. They'd stop sometimes and whisper together about what it would be like to bring a child into their very strange little life.
"I think it'd be wonderful," Tessa said when Jem brought it up again months later and asked her what shd thought about doing more than imagining it.
She wasn't a Christmas baby but they'd always think of her as being part of that Christmas nearly two years before she'd been born.
