Okay, there was one less than enjoyable thing about decorating cookies. Just one, but it was definitely not fun at all. And that was mixing up the icing and then adding the food colouring. It was hard to get the consistency right, and the consistency of it never truly ended up exactly how you wanted it, but it was still fun. This time, it was rather gloopy, but at least it wasn't runny like their first batch that was now abandoned by the sink. There really had been no saving it, and when Ziva had started threatening it with a knife, Tony had decided to just pull out a new bowl and start again. A knife bad still ended up in the abandoned bowl of icing, but he was choosing to ignore it. Better in being in the icing rather than him. Tony really hoped that the bits they had spilled would wipe up easily and not stain. Somehow, he didn't think that Ziva would enjoy having a multicoloured counter.

But none of that mattered right now because they did have a bowl of functioning icing (somewhat maybe they had had to look for the sieve to strain out the lumps) and several trays of uniced cookies. It would be a win for them to fix that as soon as possible. Never mind a win, he just wanted his reward for all this work. Cookies!

But first, the decorating. And that was fun. Right? He vaguely remembered him and a nanny decorating cookies when he was very young, and that was definitely a fond memory, so it had to be fun. Being creative was meant to be good for the mind and soul, right? He was pretty sure decorating cookies counted. And jt was going to be proper decorating because Ziva had gone all out with the decorations as well. There were the tubes of icing that you could basically draw with, sugar balls, sprinkles, all sorts of candies, and chocolates. Oh, wow.

"Tony, that is far too much icing," Ziva said with a laugh.

Tony looked down at his thickly spread icing on his cookie. There may have been more icing than actual cookie at this moment. And he hadn't even added the decorations yet. And he had big plans for those.

"Au-contraire, Zee-vah. This is just enough icing."

He would try and figure out how to scrape some off later. When Ziva wasn't looking. He may like sweet treats, but he also would like some cookie with his sugar.

She gave him a sceptical look at that, but he just flashed a smile at her.

What was the fun of decorating cookies if they didn't have an unholy amount of sugary goodness on top of them? And it wasn't like sugar couks taste bad, right? Right.

It was amazing how quickly time passed when you We comleltly enthralled you with something and you were kept busy. The two of them just worked side by side, icing, dipping in chocolate, adding decorations, thinking out designs. Mocking each other's creations, neither of then being what you could call gifted in the art department especially when it involved something as gloopy as icing.

Eventually they ran out of blank cookies and they were all sitting nicely on cooling racks and chopping boards so that the icing and chocolate coukd set. They had decided that the peanut butter ones needed to be half dipped in chocolate. And yes, there had been a whole argument over whether dipping half of them in chocolate or drizzling chocolate over them was the better option. Ziva had won despite his insistence that drizzling looked better. Apparently the quantity of chocolate mattered more.

All they now had to do was wait. And maybe clean up. Seriously, how did melted chocolate get on the floor over there? They hadn't even walked over there!

"Step away from the cookies," he warned her as he grabbed a cloth.

He knew she had light fingers, especially when it came to sugary treats. Oh sure, so did he and everyone knew it, but at least he wasn't sneaky about it. Oh, no. He did his treat snatching blatantly out in the open. There was a kind of honesty about it that way, in his opinion. Not so with Ziva. She would be talking to you one minute, and the next you knew it, there would be a cookie missing and not even tell-tale crumbs around Ziva's mouth. Come on! It was like a rule. You had to be caught out by the crumbs. But no, Ziva had to extend her ninja abilities to cookie stealing as well!

Her hand dropped to her side, and she gave him an innocent look. Neither of which he bought at all. Making sure to keep one eye on the dropped hand and another actually on her, he thrust the dish cloth at her. She didn't even try to grab it and let it drop to the floor.

"Let's distract ourselves by cleaning." He tried to say convincingly.

"We should taste them," Ziva said as they both eyed the cookies, now looking very tasty now that they were decorated.

"We should make sure they taste alright," Tony said slowly. "You know, so we don't mess up the next batch."

Because yes, there was even more to come. It was going to be a veritable feast of cookies. Not that he was going to complain.

Ziva was nodding along. "We do not want to be wasteful."

"That wouldn't be good. Pretty sure that's bad for the environment and all that."

"It would not be good and we do not need Abby to lecture us on the environment again."

"Absolutely not."

Actually, that wasn't even a joke. Yes, he cared about the environment but Abby coukd be terrifying when she got on her soapbox. Something he wasn't going to say out loud because he did not want to try and explain that phrase to Ziva. Anyway, they had more important things to focus on.

They both looked at each other and then almost immediately reached for the cookies. Taste test it was. And if they had to test more than one each, well, that was just good scientific research, wasn't it?