Based on these tumblr prompts. A new series of unconnected prompt drabbles.

It was the night before Christmas and all through the house

Not a creature was stirring, not even the mouse

The mouse was a consolation prize. The girls wanted a dog but they were far too young to be trusted with taking care of one. Emily worked through most of the day, and while her mom did agree to pick up the girls from childcare, she didn't want to contribute to the burden by adding a dog in the mix. They decided to settle for a smaller animal; one that can be kept in a cage or a tank.

Fish were not particularly interactive animals. Emily's daughters had grabby hands. She didn't want them sticking their hands in the tank and terrorizing some poor goldfish into an early death. She needed something far more hardy.

Cats were out of the question. As independent as they were, they had claws, and could cause allergies. Also they'd be expensive to keep and raise and she just didn't have the time for one of them.

Lizards were kind of creepy, and turtles could bite, so the only logical thing she could think of, to own, was a parrot. However the moment the girls looked at their sharp claws and their hard beaks, they were terrified. They didn't want to touch them. They didn't even want to go anywhere near them in the store, so all Emily could do was smile apologetically at the teen working the counter as she backed away slowly, her kids cowering behind her, holding onto her shins for dear life.

They were half-way out of the store when they bumped into some sort of display. Emily jumped out of the way, and turned towards the display she almost crashed into, reaching out with her hands to stabilize it. As she was fixing it up, Grace's eyes fell on a ball of fluff on a nearby counter. Curious, she approached it while her mother picked up the doggie chew-toys she'd knocked over.

The fluff-ball was almost completely round, but it was moving. She reached out for it but was barred from making contact by the glass enclosure. She'd hardly noticed it on her way there but now it was before her she wondered how she didn't see it. She tapped the glass, and the small hamster in the cage stuck its head up, looking around for the disturbance. Grace started giggling, which alerted Lilly to her presence and sent her bumbling along to her older sis.

Lilly's eyes fell on a distinctly white ball of fur. Whereas her sister's was grey and mellow, her own was active and exuberant. It ran so fast around its wheel that it nearly came off its hinges. Lilly couldn't blink without losing sight of it. She tried reaching for it but before she could clasp it in her hand, it bolted to the other side of the cage, unwittingly evading her tiny fingers' grasp.

Emily finished replacing the chew toys when she heard her daughters squeal. Lilly's hamster had found the food dish and busied itself with stuffing its tiny face full of sunflower seeds. It grabbed at them with its little hands and turned them, shoving them in its mouth one by one. The girls squealed with joy as they watched this tiny little ball of fluff perform the most mundane of tasks.

Emily wrapped an arm around the girls she she finally found them. "How many times do I have to tell you two not to wander off?"

"But mommy! Look! They're sooooo cuuuuuute!~" Grace and Lilly cried.

"I should get a leash for you two while we're here. A short one. With bells on it."

"Momma!"

"Allright, what is it you wanted to show me?"

Lilly and Grace pointed emphatically at the hamsters they'd been observing. Grace's brown one was fast asleep and Lilly's little devil was back at the wheel, sweating off the calories from its last meal. Emily squinted at the two small animals as she considered what her daughters were asking of her. Hamsters were cute and small and they didn't seem to be afraid of them. They were fluffy and didn't take up much space or require a lot of attention and cost a lot of money. But what was it that 'google' had said about animals with larger fur?

Suddenly images of herself having to scrub hamster hair off of her favorite outfits flashed in her brain. She gulped when she realized shedding was going to be a huge issue. She also remembered reading that sometimes their feces got stuck to their fur, and their owners had to clean it up. She nearly vomited when she realized her kids might spread hamster shit around the house.

She tried to dissuade them. She promised them Barbies and a beautiful new Barbie car -she refused to buy any dollhouses, for obvious reasons- and she even threatened to ground them but the girls were set on getting the little balls of fluff. Day in and day out, that's all they'd ever talk about. So Emily tucked her tail between her legs and escorted them back to Pet-topia the following Sunday.

They remembered exactly where the hamsters were. As hard as Emily tried to convince them to get anything else instead -even frogs! and she hated the slimy things- but they had their hearts set on getting a pair of hamsters. However fate was not on their side, as the pet store had completely run out of hamsters at the time. The last two went to a couple of kids who lived in a farm nearby.

Lilly sniffed and Grace stared off into the distance, dumbfounded. Emily knew what would happen next. She tried to reach for a tissue before Lilly started the waterworks, and as she did, out of the corner of her eye she spotted a pair of mice. She tapped Grace on the shoulder and pointed at them. Grace wandered over to them as Lilly started to sob. Grace poked her finger into the cage and the smaller mouse crawled up to her and gave her a sniff.

Lilly heard her sister giggling and walked over to investigate. As she did, the shop owner happened to walk by and decided to stop in for a chat. They're great pets for beginners apparently. Entertaining and affectionate, short fur with minimal shedding and allergies, cheap, clean and low maintenance. They're a perfect starting pet for teenagers and adults. Not so great for children seeing as they have such fragile bodies but Emily's kids weren't the kind that picked pets up. They just admired them from afar and petted them, gently, on occasion so it seemed like the perfect fit.

Dude tried to upsell a big mouse condo but Emily decided to go with a modest, generic cage, without any bells and whistles. She sighed as she fished the last $20 note out of her wallet, and fished around for the final five in change (yippee for Pet-topia's 2 for 5 sale on mice). She turned the radio up to tune her daughters out. She only had a couple of dollars left until she got paid tomorrow, but the expense was worth the smile on their faces. She enjoyed their smiling faces in the mirror but tuned them out lest they ask for ice cream or any other snacks on the drive home. She didn't have it in her heart to turn them down, but she didn't really have the money to stop for anything else right now.

She pulled into their apartment parking -she managed to finagle some dedicated parking in the back of the Brew, when she started renting the apartment on top of it- and heaved the box onto her back as she sent the twins ahead up to the landing with her set of keys. Grace let them all in and after a lot of planning and arguing they decided to put the hamster cage on the nightstand between their two beds.

Emily heaved the cage out of the box, set it up, and watched her daughters take turns tipping their mice into the cage through the door on the front of the cage. They slowly tilted their containers until their mice turned and walked out the sides. They took painstakingly long but the girls stood there and waited patiently until the mice came out in their own time. It reminded Emily of the coaxing she had to do to get people she wanted to date to come out, only it was closets, not tupperware containers, that they came out of.

The mice were newborns when they first bought them. They'd just barely grown in their fur. However with time and food they grew and grew. The cage seemed to shrink around them. The girls didn't know any better but Emily felt bad. So this year for Christmas she bit the bullet and went back for that mouse condo. $150. Can you believe it? The bastard spiked the price up for Christmas. But with Christmas around the corner, Emily had very few alternatives.

Of course, her first thought was amazon, but she knew the chances of receiving her package this side of New Year was damn near impossible. The closest PetBarn was closed for renovations and if she wanted to try another shop she'd have to hit the city. However with the shifts she picked up at the Brew -shifts she NEEDED in order to get through the Christmas period- she wouldn't have the time to hit up any of these shops before they closed.

Her only chance was to go into town and spend the night at a friend's house, then hit the shops when they opened the next morning, before her shift began. Otherwise she'd be stuck forking $150 over to a creepy teen who stared at her breasts.

She called up Hanna, and as fate would have it, she found out that her friend was out of town, but as she needed somebody to check in on her apartment and her plants, she was more than willing to have her spend the night at her apartment, despite her absence. She just had to lock up good and make sure her plants were still in good shape before she left her house. Emily thanked her about a hundred times before calling her mom and asking her if she could watch the twins overnight.

New York was beautiful this time of year.

The locals really went out of their way to decorate.

Rockefeller plaza was dreamy and the early snowfall made the city glimmer romantically. It made Emily think of France and the Eiffel tower. She'd always thought it'd be this really serene and romantic scenic place, where she could bring a loved one on a perfect date but it turned out to be a tourist's nightmare; their bags getting lost, being pushed around by the massive crowds, litter and homeless all over the streets, snappy waiters, overpriced accomodations, pickpockets, and god, all the noise! It's like Black Friday is every day in Paris!

'Paris syndrome' Spencer said it was called. Emily didn't care what it was called, she felt cheated by the whole experience.

There were parallels with Paris and the person she married. The most egregious and distinct parallel was that neither of them lived up to her expectations. She'd dreamed about them for so long, and built them up in her head but when she finally got to have them? She realized she didn't want them anymore. She wanted something else. But by then it was too late and she was already a continent away and more than $810 in debt.

She sighed as she reached for the door to Hanna's building.

It hadn't lasted long. The divorce proceedings were longer than their entire marriage. It was a whirlwind thing, brought about by mutual despair. Emily had just gotten out of a relationship she thought would last forever, and Alison? Alison just didn't want to be alone. She knew this was her last chance to not be a single mom and she took it. She sprung it on Emily and forced her to make a choice, and out of despair and fear and sadness and the tiniest bit of optimism, she got hooked.

She tried so hard to make it work. She worked her ass off for the kids and for herself. She didn't want to be the reason they grew up without two parents so she let a lot of things slide. The lying, the deceit, the laziness. She let Alison take advantage of her good nature because she couldn't look her in the eyes and said no. She let her make the big decisions; when to cut their hair, what color they should paint their rooms, when to pierce their ears, what school to put them in, if they should do any sports... she didn't even let her choose their middle names.

Finally though she put her foot down about one thing. One very big, important thing. She let the smaller things go, but something as big as this, was not something she take lying down.

When Alison wanted to move them halfway around the country for a job she had in the bag. A job at some prestigious school for rich, snobby brats. Alison loved the opportunity, and Emily didn't want to hold her back, but there was no way she was uprooting her kids from their home and moving them around the country so they could go to school with a bunch of snobby brats.

Alison glared. She was the big decision maker in this family and what she said went; or so she thought. Emily fought back however, harder than ever before.

She wasn't budging on this.

Alison tried her greatest hits: the puppy eyes, the sniffles, and even tried offering sex in return. That's when Emily realized that their relationship was transactional. You do this for me and I do that for you. It was a harsh, staggering blow to their relationship, realizing that it was no more than a business partnership. Though in retrospect she realized she should have seen it coming. The sex was reserved for special occasions and affection from Alison was a reward for her. She was surprised she didn't see it sooner.

It was like living in this idyllic bubble, where she thought she was living the life; working a great job, having a real family and being in love. Only when that bubble popped she realized it was all a lie.

They lived in Alison's house. First step was to get her stuff packed and get her children out of that place. They weren't happy about being shoved into Emily's old room, a few houses down from the house they've known all their lives as their own, but that was nothing compared to losing one of their parents.

Alison's abandonment left a huge hole in their hearts. One that Emily tried to fill with love and toys and other distractions. She tried her best but she knew that it must have felt like Alison was rejecting them. She and her friends had all had their fair share of abandonment in the past and they knew just how bad it stung when it came from somewhere completely unexpected. For Hanna it was her dad. Spencer, her birth mother and so on. And Emily? Emily felt a small stab every time her father was called out of town for work. She knew it was his duty. She knew he did it for his country and his family. But deep down it still felt like he was abandoning her every time he left. Especially when she was younger. Even though she tried telling herself he was coming back, the voice in the back of her head told her she was the reason he was leaving, and that he'd never return.

So she worked her ass off at work to compensate. She took and extra coaching gig at the local pool, working through saturdays and holidays, and she picked up some shifts at the brew after work on certain weekdays. She got back on her feet -without any financial help from Alison- and she picked up a lease on the apartment over the Brew. She hired a u-haul, loaded the toddler beds, and her boxes, and before she knew it, she had a new lease on life.

It was tough getting back on her feet. There were constant setbacks. Money was tighter than ever, with the cost of childcare, clothes and food for three people and the rent and other amenities really piling up, so she had to get creative. Her jobs paid for necessities, but full-day childcare was no longer something that she could afford. Her mother pitched in where she could but she had a life as well, and a job she couldn't be taking days off of all the time.

But living in a small town had its perks. Everybody knew everyone, and no one had a problem with her bringing her kids to work. After all, they were Emily Fields' daughters. They were kind and well behaved and curteous. Little angels. Just like their mother was.

Every morning they'd pick a toy out of their playbox. Their little fingers tapping against their chins as they examined every single one of them. Which would it be today? The Barbie? The Iron Man? Lightning McQueen? Elsa? Or Bob the Builder? Then they would each pick out a book, and grab their blankets. Em would strap them into their car seats and cover them up. She didn't want them getting cold in the morning chill. They'd all pile into her old beaten up Toyota and drive to Rosewood High where they'd spend the first part of their day.

Emily's office had three chairs; the swivel chair behind the desk, and two accent chair for visitors. Her girls usually played on the floor, but come nap time they would pile into the one chair, while Emily sat in the other and read them their story books out loud. One blanket would be folded and used as a pillow for the both of them, while they covered up with the other one, and they'd snooze well into the afternoon, when they'd be woken up for practice.

The pool was open all day but nary a swimmer dared ruin their hair for the day by practicing before the last bell rang, so she didn't really need to worry about supervising anybody before 2-3, but when that last bell rang, she was already at the pool, with a kid on either shoulder and a clipboard in her hand. She had to get them up and moving because if they stayed asleep, the bell would give them a rude awakening. So she'd give her little assistants a few tasks to get them up and warmed up.

The girls would help her haul equipment around. There were these underwater dumbbells they'd bring out from the equipment room. They thought that they were much stronger than the swimmers, since they had no trouble hauling them around when they were dry. That's why she never made them try to lift them when they were wet; she didn't want to crush their egos.

They were a permanent fixture around that pool, and when they got a little older, they traded their afternoon naps for laps in that very same pool. She taught her daughters to swim where she worked, and from 1 to 2-3 that entire pool was theirs. They'd wear themselves out, and be docile little lambs by the time they reached the Brew.

Working at the Brew came with its own benefits. Free hot chocolate was the girls' favorite perk. They'd get one every afternoon, when they finished their homework. They'd settle in with their cocoa and a plate of cookies, and read through their books for the day. They'd stop at the library and trade them out every other day, since it was on the way, and the boss didn't mind if she was a couple minutes late, and then they'd sit down with their bundles, and read through their entire piles of books, then the next day, they would trade. 'They were becoming regular little Spencers', Emily thought to herself.

She pushed the front door open and entered Hanna's apartment building. The place was air-conditioned throughout, and even the lobby was several degrees warmer than the outside. Emily stood there for a minute, taking in her surroundings as she took her gloves off. She couldn't quite remember which floor her friend stayed in, but she figured Hanna would have forgotten to tell the post office to hold her mail, and thus her mailbox would be stuffed with letters right about now. All she had to do was look for the letterbox that's overstuffed with letters and catalogs, and she'd find her number.

She found the postbox easily enough, and sure enough, it was full of mail. She tried prying it open so she could get the last few pieces of mail but as she pulled out this one last pizza flyer, a sudden breeze caused her to sneeze, sending her envelopes scattering on the floor in a little whirlwind. She shook her head as she bent over to pick up the scattered papers.

The sudden gust that blew the papers out of Emily's hands was caused by a person entering the building. A woman, around her age. When she noticed the mess she made she rushed over to help, taking her gloves off on her way so she could get a better grip on the paper. She quickly squatted down next to Emily and helped her gather all the scattered papers on her side of the floor, her fingers brushing against Emily's hand as they both reached for a flyer in the middle.

It all happened so quickly that Emily was left reeling.

One minute she was picking flyers up off the floor, the next she the pad of somebody's fingers against the back of her hand. She wasn't sure if the goosebumps were caused by the sudden contact or the deep, breathy apology she heard right after. All she knew is that she recognized that voice almost instantly, and both their hands stilled frozen at that moment as she felt the goosebumps, followed by a shiver running down her spine.

She turned her head towards her voice, her breath hitching when they finally made eye contact. Her eyes instinctively dropped to those familiar lips. She licked her own lips subconsciously as she stared at those lips, longingly. She couldn't move. This woman had cast some sort of spell on her. A spell that was only amplified when she heard her whisper her name. Their breaths began to synchronize as they looked into each other's eyes. And then Paige's eyes flickered down to Emily's lips..

Neither of them spoke after that.

"Did they brush their teeth properly?" Emily asked Paige as she walked back into the room.

"Brushed, flossed AND used their lil baby mouthwash. Did you brush your teeth properly?" Paige smiled as she took off her robe.

"There's only one way to find out." Emily smirked as Paige crawled onto the bed next to her.

"I guess I'd better check then. Wouldn't want you to get any cavities so close to Christmas and miss out on all these gingerbread cookies we made earlier." Paige snarked back as she leaned in for a kiss.

"About those cookies... how many do you think we put away tonight?" Emily asked, pausing Paige by tapping a finger against her lips.

"I don't know. A couple dozen... Maybe 24 or 25. Why?"

"I could've sworn I baked more cookies than that..."

Paige shrugged her shoulders and Emily shook her head to clear it before pulling Paige in for a kiss. The kid part of Christmas Eve was over and now the adults got to play... well, the kid part was almost over. Less than a minute after Paige kissed Lilly and Grace goodnight and walked out of their room, they kicked their covers off and congregated around the plastic container they smuggled upstairs.

They wished each other a Merry Christmas as they nibbled on their pilfered cookies. They pulled off the perfect heist when their mothers weren't watching. Now they got to enjoy the spoils of their labor. And as for evidence? They'd got that covered. They pooled their crumbs together and and sprinkled them in their mice's feeding trough. After all, Christmas was for everybody. They giggled as they wriggled back into their beds, their tummies full of sugar, their teeth protected by the mouthwash they surprised Paige by insisting on using. All four Fields girls fell asleep with big grins on their faces that night.