We're making cookies ~

[Aiden Munslow]

“What do you want to talk about?” He asked even though he knew exactly what she wanted to talk about. He knew exactly what she meant, but he figured that they could avoid this conversation until he figured out what exactly constituted as knowing enough about a person to be in a relationship, and how he was going to ask that question. “How I am going to make this the best Christmas ever?” he said with a grin. “You clearly don’t like snow,” he said. “Considering it’s so warm in here,” he remembered the time his mom made fake snow when he was little for Christmas one time, because obviously it didn’t snow where he was from. “I so I mean there goes that Idea? So how exactly do I make this fun for you?” he asked avoiding the subject of really talking to her, he stirred the cookie mix a little more, and then looked up at her.

He knew they needed to talk, and at some point there would be no avoiding and carefully walking around the subject, and not talking about it. Not that he didn’t enjoy the relationship they had now, because he did, it was nice but he was starting to like her more as a person the more he got to know her, and something was probably going to come out of that. After all he was already kind of acting like a boyfriend, with all the kisses but there was so much more he wanted to know about her, for one how she could hate one of the most happy holidays, even though he liked Halloween better than Christmas anyway. He wanted to know more about her past, and it would help if her little sister wasn’t being annoying, but never the less. “Since you hate Christmas, what holiday do you like, if you don’t like Halloween then we can’t be friends, and I’ll just leave and take my cookies with me,” he was only joking with her about that though.

[Hannah Briden]

Hannah fixed Aiden with a stern gaze when he pretended not to know what she wanted to talk about. It was better that they didn't bother discussing it now, though. Like most conversation topics, she refused to speak about such things in front of her little sister. She especially didn't want to talk about Christmas with Sierra there - her sister always made it hard on her when she found out. Hannah, lost in her thoughts, "tuned back in" when Aiden mentioned snow. Shaking her head "no" vehemently, she frowned. "I used to love snow stuff, but then there was this one time I built a snow man on top of a scooter, and someone stole my scooter. Then I froze my tongue to a pole one time because someone," It was obviously Sierra, by the way she was snickering from the couch, "dared me to do it. Eventually I just got tired of being so cold. I mean, snow is pretty, but I hate freezing my butt off every winter." She shrugged, noticing then that he had changed the topic of conversation. Ah, well - eventually they would get to know each other and then they could talk about relationships.

Hannah laughed, lighting up like a Christmas tree (no pun intended!) when he mentioned Halloween. "I absolutely love Halloween - don't worry," she said, nudging his shoulder. "I guess you're stuck here with me and your cookies, then, since we all like Halloween." She attempted a soft joke. "Ah, October 31st - it's always been my favorite day in the year. I remember when I was younger, my mom used to make costumes for us every single year. It was the greatest thing ever - even though we were all, like, a group. There was one time we went as cowboys... one time we were mermaids, I loved that. After --" she cut herself off from saying After Sierra went missing, for fear of being insensitive. "After a while, I mean, my mom stopped making the costumes so we would make them ourselves."

[Aiden Munslow]

"I like mermaids," he said, it's probably weird to say that they're hot even though they don't have legs. He shrugged and decided not to say that. "Yeah one year I didn't have a costume, because I couldn't pick anything and it was like Halloween and my mom was like 'Well I'm not taking you to get stuff for a costume,' so then I ended up being a thug type thing, it's was really weird cause I'm so skinny, I don't really look tough at all." why he felt the need to share that story he didn't know, but he had a habit of talking about the most random things, when he didn't know what to say, and the fact that he did most of the talking was not helping him get to know her at all.

"Do you have a baking sheet?" he asked, he stuck his finger in the bowl and tasted the batter. "Well this isn't half bad," he said, it was really sugary, but they were sugar cookies after all. "They're really sweet," he said with fake optimism, trying to make it sound like these cookies were going to be decent.

[Hannah Briden]

Hannah laughed, nodding when he said one year that he didn't have a costume. "Woah, a thug?" she snickered in spite of herself. She hoped that didn't come across as rude. "That's not as bad as when I was six," she said, hoping that sharing her own story would make chuckling at his "thug" costume less rude. "I thought that a costume was just supposed to be flashy and pretty, so on Halloween day, I found the Elmer's glue and kind of just put it all over me, and then rolled around in glitter. My mom was hella pissed with me when she saw." She had to giggle at herself - it was so ridiculous. "I was a handful when I was little."

Hannah nodded when he asked for a baking pan. Their stove had this nice little compartment under the oven door. Bending over, she tugged at the drawer, which always stuck. From inside came the loud clanging of tons of baking sheets and cooling racks hitting each other. With a grunt, she yanked it open and grabbed the nearest cookie sheet, as well as a cooling rack. Setting both on the counter, she stuck her hand in the mix and took a little taste. They were really sweet. She wrinkled her nose, but figured cookies were supposed to be crazy sweet, right?

[Aiden Munslow]

"Just glitter huh?" he laughed. "That sounds like a pretty rad costume to me." He teased. "I was a pain the ass when I was a kid, I think most kids are," he shrugged, and went to wash his hands. "These are really sweet," he said. When he was done washing his hands he dried them off on his pants and then gave her a kiss. "Just like you," that was one of those boyfriend things to do that he did when he wasn't even her boyfriend. What did it even matter anymore? he just knew that he liked her, and that they were probably going to be a couple eventually if she agreed to it, he just had to find the right way to ask, and it was going to take a while to come up with it. Plus he was more concentrated on making her have a nice Christmas, because spreading holiday cheer was a good thing to do. He couldn't help by grin when she scrunched up her nose.

"You're really cute," he said and kissed her again but this time on the lips. "So maybe I wanted to make you like Christmas so I could spend more time with you, but I mean we also get cookies and that's not a bad thing right?" he wasn't sure where all that affection had come from really. He looked down at the bowl of cookie mix, "it's really not as good as the frozen kind," he said.

[Hannah Briden]

Hannah shook her head, flushing a little. "Yeah, just glitter. It was terrible - I remember it hurt like a bitch to wash off, and then I didn't really have a costume that year. I ended up just putting on a cow boy hat, and my brother Thomas gave me piggy back rides so that I could pretend to be a cow girl riding a wild horse." She chuckled, thinking about her brother. She hadn't talked to him in quite a while. She wondered if he would like Aiden - probably. When her father and mother separated, she really only had Thomas as a father figure, and he was always really kind to her.

Shaken out of her thoughts by his kiss, she smiled, and wrinkled her nose, always a reaction. Her family used to call her Hannah Rabbit because she would twitch her nose like a bunny. She nodded, thinking about Christmas. It always made her sad, made her think of when times weren't so good. She sighed, then glanced at the cookie batter. "I mean, spending Christmas with you can't be terrible," she teased, and pulled a spoon from her drawer, plopping a ball of cookie dough on the tray. "And cookies are good. Home made would be better but I'm afraid of making molten lava hockey pucks."