There’s some disagreement about the type of cookies to make.

Kris wants simple peanut butter cookies (“easy, straight forward, no fuss”), but, as Tao points out, they already have a 2lb. bag of peanut brittle in their pantry, not to mention a solid brick of peanut butter fudge in their fridge, both the results of a shameful shopping trip they had made the previous week in which self-restraint had unmercifully abandoned them in the seasonal food aisle. At a certain point, Tao just has to put his foot down. Despite what Kris may think, there really, really, is such a thing as too much peanut butter.

As an alternative, he suggests cookies with strawberry jam in the middle (“my mom used to make them when I was a kid”), but Kris immediately shoots him down, informing Tao that mixing fruit and dessert is nothing less than a cardinal sin, punishable by death and eternal damnation. They square off across their kitchen island, each staring the other down with their baked good preferences.

Eventually, they settle on sugar cookies with sprinkles because a) they’ve never made them before and b) sugar cookies are a classic, the kind of cookies that Hallmark depicts being left for Santa, and they’re both enraptured with the sheer Christmas-y-ness of it all, blinded by visions of rolling out dough, cutting out shapes of bells and reindeer and Christmas trees, and sprinkling them with red and green sprinkles.

Unfortunately, what neither of them realize until Tao is elbow deep in flower, rolling out yet another sheet of dough---Jesus Christ, it’s never ending; they’ve filled up eight cookie trays, there’s another in the oven, and they’ve still got over half of the dough left--- and Kris, red icing smeared under his eye, green icing brushed through his hair like a particularly sugary gel, and sprinkles covering very flat surface around him, attempting to decorate them.

“Never again,” Kris mutters, spreading red icing on a Santa cookie, something like the fifteenth million one they’ve made. “We are never making these cookies again, Tao.”

“It’s not that…” Tao trails off before stopping himself because yes, actually, it is that bad. There's no doubt in his mind. They’re going to die here in this kitchen.

He heaves a deep sigh, leaning against the counter, palms pressed flat, to mentally ready himself for the next section of never-ceasing dough he’s about to roll out when a sudden, dry puff of flour hits his face, smacking across his eye, and trailing all the way over to his ear.

Kris stands in front of him, cookie decorating clearly abandoned. His hand rests in the tin of flour Tao had set on the kitchen counter for rolling out dough. He runs his fingers through it, picking up a small handful and letting it drop back into the tin, before raising a careful, deliberate eyebrow at Tao.

Twenty minutes later, they’ve got a kitchen covered in a sprinkling of white, nine sheets of cookies overlapping as they cool on the counters, a large pile of green sprinkles by the fridge from the desperate moment when Kris had stolen the entire tin of flour and Tao was forced to find other ammunition, and a pleasant exhaustion humming through their bodies, the kind of ache left behind only by wild, unrestrained happiness.

They sit on the floor, backs pressed to the counters behind them, each of them steadily working their way through a chunk of cookie dough. It’s an amicable silence that settles around them. The side of Kris’ foot taps a steady, comforting rhythm against Tao’s.