Chapter Text
"Remind me again why we're stressing out so hard about gifts when this isn't even our holiday," Ezri says.
Ziyal stops just long enough to drop a kiss on the top of her head, before continuing across the room to remove her sweet rolls from the oven.
"We're celebrating because we love our friends and we enjoy their company," Ziyal says. "And you're stressing because you are, unfortunately, prone to stress."
"It takes all of the fun out of stressing when you're calm and reasonable about it." Ezri bites her lip and looks down at the mess in front of her. She'd left the oddly shaped presents for Ziyal to wrap, but she'd through that she could handle wrapping a book, at least. It's a rectangle. It's all flat edges.
It's managed to poke its corners through the paper in three places.
"Do you really think that stressing is fun?" Ziyal asks her, all earnest curiosity and desire to help.
"Not really." Ezri rips the wrapping paper off of the book. Maybe she can just hand it to Ben. The real surprise is the inscription on the inside from Kai Taluno, anyway.
"Because I do sometimes find it adorable when you overthink trivial matters," Ziyal tells her, carefully transferring to the rolls to a cooling rack. "But I didn't think it made you very happy."
"Adorable?"
Ziyal looked up from the baking to give her one of those heart-meltingly warm smiles she has, like all of the goodness inside of her is beaming out, just for Ezri.
"What did you call it," she says, impish, "when you spent three months panicking about asking me to move in with you?"
"Nerve-wracking!" Ezri says, though she has to admit that it had worked out well in the end, and for the months since then. "Next year, if Jake asks us to come to his holiday party, we're saying no."
"You said that last year," Ziyal reminds her. "And then you went to the party, and you had a lovely time, and Jake bragged for six months about the antique typewriter you'd found for him."
"Hm." Ziyal has a point; Ziyal often has a point. "Replicator, one gift bag," she says, and places Ben's book inside of it.
Maybe she is worrying about nothing, but at least she has Ziyal to remind her, and help her through, and smile at her like she knows that everything will be all right.
"There. That's all the presents, isn't it? Am I forgetting anything?"
"Just one," Ziyal says.
Ezri blinks. She really thought she'd gotten everyone covered. Jake, Ben, Kasidy, Rebecca --
Ziyal places a tiny box in front of Ezri. "Merry Christmas."
"Oh no!" Ezri blurts out. "You didn't!"
"I couldn't help myself." She lowers her eyes, and the scales under her eyes are tinging pink, like she actually thinks she's done something wrong. "You know I like to make you happy."
"No -- I love you, I mean I love it, I mean I don't know what it is but I love that you got me something, but -- " Ezri's hands flutter and fall into her lap. "Your gift is at Ben's, he's been hiding it there for me for weeks!"
Ziyal raises her head back up to meet Ezri's eyes, and then she laughs, a small beautiful noise like all of the static in Ezri's brain falling away.
"Well, then," she says, bending in half to kiss Ezri, and it's an even more ridiculous height difference when Ezri is sitting down. "Let's go to the party."