Work Text:
Another crisp wall aligns with the others, resting gently just so . It's got a curve to it, unlike its fellows sitting on the counter where the others had already finished. A curve that reminds him just a little bit of home.
Of course, they never did this sort of thing at home – this particular holiday was never popular enough to gain much traction, and certainly not enough for the more involved ways of celebrating it to be something he might’ve come across.
Still, it's nice. Nice to be celebrating something with everyone else. Nice to be building something with his own hands. Nice to have a warm home to do it in. He can see the appeal, and why the younger boys are so enthusiastic about it.
Though he has to admit part of what's so pleasant about the current moment is that the boys have finished with their own houses and are now chasing each other's tails outside.
There's a soft shuffling behind him in the kitchen, the click snap whoosh of the stove and a quiet tink of a kettle being set upon it. Welcome domesticity.
His hands stay steady as he adds another curved wall and pipes icing between them to join it all together solidly, glimmering like the snow that he'd never seen on a building like the one he's creating.
More quiet shuffling behind him, gentle fingers curling over his shoulder, careful not to startle him.
“Pretty,” Yone hums as he slides a plate of nearly translucent sugar panes beside him and leans a hip onto the table’s edge.
K'Sante spares a hand to press on Yone's fingers with a smile before reaching for a little circular pane to fit onto his house.
“It needs to be, if I'm going to convince you to live in it with me,” he teases, offering a sly glance upward just to catch Yone's pleased little huff. “I've heard you're used to the high life.”
“Don't let it fool you,” Yone assures him dryly as he gestures at the towering structure he'd finished earlier, “It's much easier to build a skyscraper when you don't feel like cutting the gingerbread sheets short.”
“Ah, an efficient mind.”
The smile he so enjoys blooms as Yone leans into his side.
“Yes, let's call it that.”
A quiet settles over the kitchen again – the shouting and laughter from outside muffled and only the steady whoosh of an ever-hotter kettle waiting to whistle its readiness... but not yet. Now it's just their breathing, and the quiet sounds of creation. A home coming together under his hands, perhaps not one precisely in the shape he recognizes from his childhood, but a home nonetheless.
The pitch of the kettle rises and Yone along with it, pausing just long enough to graze a kiss across his temple. Warm and fleeting, but it'll be back.
Mugs clink behind him, and the gentle scrape of a tin being opened. The bubbling rush of hot water and the cheerful glance of a spoon being stirred.
Yone hums as he shuffles over to the door and cracks it just enough to call out to the boys, then slides it shut and rejoins K'Sante at the table – two mugs in hand.
K'Sante leans to trade a kiss for cocoa, smiling at the sounds of tumbling and laughing as the boys burst inside and shed their winter skins onto the floor, rolling like puppies across the room.
He puts the final touches on his gingerbread home – a row of happy gumdrops sitting inside, warm and together.