"I think they're done."

"…Just a tad."

Emma tilted her head, considering the extra-crispy cutout cookies. They weren't…so bad, were they? Sure, that reindeer looked a little toasty…that snowman a little charred…that Christmas tree looked like it was going to crumble to ash any second, but in a very tasteful way, she was sure.

Neal slowly lifted his hand and patted her shoulder. "I'm sorry, Em," he said gently.

Oh, goddamn it.

Did I put too much flour? Not enough flour? Yeast, was I supposed to put in yeast? Emma rubbed her forehead anxiously, trying to remember the recipe she'd used. She'd gotten it off the Internet (the recipe book her mother gave her had been used to kill a particularly large spider, and she'd forced Neal to burn it lest the spider guts should seep into her skin and poison her), but she couldn't remember anything else.

Maybe she'd just left them in the oven too long.

She sighed heavily, looking at her overcooked cookies. She'd used up all her dough, it wasn't like she could make another batch. "That stupid neighborhood party is tomorrow," she said miserably. "I'm not going to have time to run to the store and bake another couple rounds and frost them all. What the hell am I supposed to do?"

Neal furrowed his brow, twitching his mouth to the side thoughtfully. "You know," he said after a time. "It's not like anyone's going to know they're your cookies…" He picked one up and held it to the light, studying it. "They're not falling apart, either."

Emma looked up at him, raising her eyebrows. "You sound like a man with a plan."

"Frosting is a marvelous invention," he mused, turning the cookie between his fingers. "You know, if you put enough frosting on something…"

She leaned forward, watching him intently. "I'm listening."

"No one really has to know they're burnt, do they?" He looked over his shoulder, raising an eyebrow. "I won't tell if you won't."

Emma nodded, a smile slowly crawling on her face. "I'll get the frosting."

"There you go."

Forty butter knives. One bowl of frosting. No partridge, no pear tree: just the two of them working side by side to ladle as much frosting as possible onto the burnt cookies, so none of their dumbfuck neighbors would be any the wiser.

"You know what would be kind of cute?" Emma remarked, spreading a glob of white frosting onto a blackened snowman. "If I whimsically put frosting on your nose."

"Resist the whimsy."

"Or if we had one of those cute little food fights you always see couples on T.V. have," she went on. "I throw flour at you, you crack an egg in my hair, we splatter brownie batter over each other. And somehow, that always turns into a big romantic scene and we kiss and realize that the other is what we've been looking for our entire lives…"

"That would make a mess in the kitchen," he pointed out. "I'm not going to crack eggs and shit, and then just leave it there. It would drive me nuts."

Emma closed her eyes, clenching her teeth. "Do you always have to be so—?"

"Normal?"

"Reasonable? I mean, can't you ever have a little fun?"

Neal looked over at her, frowning defensively. "I have fun."

"I can barely get you to wear a Santa hat during Christmas," she scoffed. "You're a Scrooge. All year round."

"I'm frosting Christmas cookies as we speak."

"No, you're using them as a chance to pull one over the neighbors because you have a sick fascination with getting away with stuff like that."

Neal snorted to himself, tossing his cookie onto the drying sheet. "It's so funny, though."

"Not really."

He shrugged. "It's a little funny."

"Okay, yes, it's a little funny," she said grudgingly. "But not so funny that it's enough. You're severely lacking in whimsy, Neal."

"Hey come on," he complained. "I built a snowman, I decorated a Christmas tree…I wrapped presents with bows and ribbons, didn't I?"

"But I had to drag the whimsy out of you," Emma said exasperatedly. "You should be volunteering whimsy. It's supposed to just bubble out of you—like me." She gave him a winning smile, flourishing her hands. "See?"

Neal stared back with half-lidded eyes, unimpressed. "I'll stick with the scroogeing, thanks." He turned back to frosting his cookies. "You know where whimsy gets you, Em? Eating too many candy canes and having a meltdown over Christmas cards. Oppressing me under a Nazi-like regime, just to wrap a few presents. Building snow gladiators because you can't stand the thought of someone beating you at Christmas stuff."

"I won," Emma said instantly. "My snowman was a million, thousand times better than yours."

"We agreed to never speak of it again," Neal reminded her.

"Right. Sorry."

"It's okay."

"But I feel like I have to double up on the whimsy, to make up for both of us," she said pleadingly. "Be a little crazy with me, huh?"

"I wore a Santa hat the other day," Neal said, staring at her. "How much more crazy do you want?"

Emma narrowed her eyes, pointing a frosting-battered knife at him. "You have no soul, Scrooge Cassidy," she said, and bopped the frosting to his nose. "No. Soul."

Neal crossed his eyes, glowering at the frosting on the tip of his nose. "What did I say about the frosting?"

Emma smiled, dolloping another scoop of frosting in his hair. "That if you put enough frosting on something…."