You Make It Feel Like Christmas / drarry

The Lighthouse Keeper

12 days until Christmas.

Scents of cinnamon and fresh biscuits waft in the air and they remind Draco of Potter.

Eyes green like mistletoe, streaked with the gold of holiday streamers, and lips the red of a candy apple, soft like marshmallow—

"Earth to Draco, is anyone in there?" Pansy's nettled voice permeates Draco's reverie, followed by the biting smell of something burning.

His eyes travel to the oven, where swirls of smoke rise from the lightly charred Scottish shortbreads.

"Shit, sorry Pans," he mutters while fervently pulling on oven mitts to perform a rescue mission for the biscuits.

Tonight he's acting as Pansy's sous-chef as she's taken on the responsibility of Christmas baking. In the Parkinson-Goldstein residence's stylish kitchen they've already managed to prepare two enormous puddings, a collection of gingerbread men, and several dozen double chocolate muffins before the calamity of the shortbreads. Despite Pansy's disposition to orderliness, every table and counter in the room is covered in bowls, spatulas, cookie cutters, baking sheets, cake moulds, pans, and flour. On the kitchen island between them there's also a half bottle of Bordeaux and two freshly empty wine glasses.

"It's not me you should be apologising to, it's the shortbreads!" Pansy cries out as Draco sets the oven tray onto the granite counter. "Look at them, all burnt from the edges."

Draco grimaces at the sight. "I'm sure I can... scrape the worst bits off?"

A frustrated sigh accompanies Pansy's eye roll. "Forget it, you're useless, here," she pushes a heart-shaped cookie cutter into his hand, "think you can manage the next batch?"

"I'm distracted, not a child," Draco scoffs, but accepts the cutter anyway, moving to attend to the freshly rolled out dough.

Pansy's already pouring them more red whilst waving a tea towel through the air to dissolve the worst of the smoke. "You're right, a child would have noticed the biscuits burning."

"I'm starting to think that I was only requested to help because Noah and Alexander were unavailable." Draco tuts with feigned scandal as he reaches for his glass.

"Oh, don't be so dramatic, Draco," Pansy huffs, but mutters into her glass, "That's only like... half of the truth."

The wine is rich and full-bodied on Draco's tongue and he goes in for another sip before returning to cutting new shortbreads. "And how is their Yule Pageant coming along?"

Anthony has volunteered to direct Alex's nursery class's Christmas performance this year. Monday and Thursday are rehearsal days, which means Pansy has the house to herself in the evenings. Draco is not sure if baking two hundred cookies would be his idea of relaxation, although he reckons it's easier this way than with the two little ones running around.

"Wonderfully, if Tony is to be believed." Pansy's scraping the burnt bits off the biscuits. "I have to hand it to him, it takes an extraordinary disposition to be able to wrangle two dozen tiny schoolchildren."

"Christ, I can't imagine," Draco shakes his head while lifting the last shortbread to the fresh baking sheet. "I can barely wrangle myself." He folds up the remaining dough and gives it a few kneads before starting to roll it back out.

"So, what's got you so preoccupied?" Pansy's tone is too offhanded to not be calculated as she pops a mangled shortbread in her mouth.

Draco just hopes his shrug is casual. "Nothing, travel plans." Or lack thereof.

He had spent much of Sunday thinking about his date with Potter—about his eyes, and the way he'd called Draco sexy with that devastating smirk, and how he thought Draco was handsome... the way he'd kissed him, god it still made his legs turn to jelly. And if he'd wanked a few times thinking about it then it wasn't anyone else's business but his own. It was safe to say that travel plans could not have been further from his mind.