InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ Purity Oneshots ❯ The Christmas Cake ( One-Shot )

[ X - Adult: No readers under 18. Contains Graphic Adult Themes/Extreme violence. ]

The soft crackle of the fire dancing merrily on the hearth on the other side of the bedroom loft was the only sound to be heard in the silence as Cain Zelig stretched out in the huge bed, scowling slightly while he tried not to be concerned about his youngest son's 'girlfriend'.  What did it matter if Evan assured him a number of times that it was all an act for his mother's sake?  It didn't, did it?  At least, it didn't when Cain had the unsettling suspicion that Evan was biting off a little more than he could chew.  It wouldn't be the first time he'd done that, no, and Cain was certain that it wouldn't be the last, either.  Still . . .

Oh, he liked Valerie Denning well enough.  Beautiful, certainly, and that wasn’t surprising in the least, as far as Cain was concerned.  With that particular son, he had never actually considered that he’d find a woman any less than drop dead gorgeous, all things considered, and looks aside, she was a very smart woman—an attorney, no less—who had been representing Evan in the reckless driving case that he'd been fighting.  Once that was over, though, Cain had thought that Evan would revert back to his hedonistic ways.

But there was something . . . different . . . about Evan's behavior when Valerie was around, and Cain couldn't rightfully say that it was a bad thing, either.  Yet there was something that belied the surface between those two, something that Cain couldn’t really put his finger on, but there, just the same.  That strange tension was the reason for his reticence, he supposed.  Of course, if Cain had his way, none of his children would have to deal with any of the ups and downs on their roads to finding their true mates.  Even then . . .

His musings were cut short, however, when Gin Zelig skittered up the steps with a bright smile on her pretty face and a huge burgundy leather covered photo album in her hands.  When she noticed her husband watching her, she giggled and held up the book.  Cain grinned, though the expression had more to do with the adorable little Santa hat perched jauntily on her head at a tilt so that it covered one of her little white puppy ears but left the other exposed.  Add the long, red robe trimmed in white faux fur, and, well, she looked just like a mini-Mrs.-Claus . . .

“I just felt like looking at some old pictures,” she explained in lieu of a proper greeting as she crawled onto the bed beside him.

Chuckling, Cain pushed himself into a sitting position and pulled Gin back against him as she  plopped the album on his lap.

“Oh, remember that?” Gin asked as he opened the cover, revealing the portrait that they'd had done in October just before their very first Christmas together as a married couple.  Her bright golden eyes were glowing so happily there, and while Cain could still see the hint of lingering gauntness in her face and arms, he knew that she wasn't nearly as bad in that image as she had been when he'd gone back to Japan to find her months before.  The endearingly silly girl had blossomed over the years into a  downright gorgeous woman, hadn't she . . .?

“Of course I do,” he replied, sparing a moment to kiss her temple before turning his attention back to the book once more.  “That was the year I wanted to give you a very special something, wasn't it?”

Gin's soft laughter warmed the air far better than the fire dancing on the hearth, and though the memory of the consuming fear still gripped him—the overwhelming sense that what Gin wanted and what he could lose was far too frightening to deal with.  But she was full of miracles, wasn't she?  Gin always had been . . .

“Sebastian was the single best Christmas present you've ever given me,” Gin said softly, reaching back over her shoulder to rub his cheek with her hand.

Cain chuckled again.  It was easier to do that now.  After all, Bas had a family of his own these days, and Gin had successfully delivered not just him but his younger brother, Evan, as well.  “Yeah, well, you have grandbabies to spoil now,” he remarked as he tightened his arms around her waist.  “Guess you don't need another Christmas present like that one.”

Gin sighed and giggled then bit her lip thoughtfully.

“Oh, God,” Cain groaned.  “Gin—”

“No, no, it isn't about that,” she insisted quickly, fluttering a hand to cut him off.  “It's just . . .”

“Just what?” Cain prompted despite the warning bells ringing in his head.

Wrinkling her nose, Gin tapped her lips in the way than she usually did when she was concentrating.  “I like Valerie,” she said at length, as though she hadn't been too sure before.

Cain blinked and shook his head slowly.  “You just now decided that?” he couldn't help asking.

She sighed again—this one, long and drawn out.  “N-no,” she muttered.  “I mean, I've liked her all along, but . . .”

“But?”

She smiled suddenly, a bright smile that was meant to reassure him, he supposed.  Then again, maybe she was trying to reassure herself . . . “Didn't it seem like they were more friends than boyfriend and girlfriend when they got here?”

“You think so?” Cain deadpanned.  To be completely honest, he was more than a little surprised that she'd have picked up on that.  Then again, she knew Evan probably better than just about anyone else so maybe it wasn't so shocking, after all . . .

Gin nodded, flipping pages in the album idly and without really looking at the images she was passing.  “I don't know.  I'd have said that maybe they weren't really together; that they were just pretending to be, but that's silly, isn't it?”  She giggled softly.  “Why on earth would they do that, right?”

“R-right,” Cain drawled.  “Baby girl—”

“Oh, I just figured it out!” she blurted, unmindful that she'd just interrupted him.

“You did?”

She nodded enthusiastically.  “She's just a little shy, you know?  Like Nezumi . . . She hates it when Ryomaru gets all touchy and stuff around other people.  Valerie must be just like that, too!”

Cain opened his mouth to scoff at that, but snapped it closed when he saw the very happy expression on her face.  She really wanted to believe that Evan and Valerie were seriously dating, didn't she?

He sighed inwardly, reaching behind his head to dislodge the hair tie that held his long bronze hair back out of the way.  Of course she did.  Gin, like any mother, just wanted her children to find the right one and settle down—and give her lots of grandbabies, he supposed, and woe betide anyone who dared to squash that dream, including himself.

“Oh!” she exclaimed, taking no notice of Cain's lack of commentary as she turned her attention back to the photo album.  “Isn't that the year you—?”

“We promised we'd never talk about that Christmas again, Gin.  Remember?” he reminded her tightly, as he winced inwardly.

She frowned.  “But look at poor Evan,” she said, tapping a delicately tapered claw against the plastic covered page over a photo taken Christmas night—after the trip to the emergency room where the doctors had inspected Evan's broken arm and set it in a splint that they'd removed the next day after the bone had healed a little.  “He's smiling, though.  Such a little trooper . . .”

Cain snorted to let her know what he thought of her 'little trooper'.  “He was fine,” Cain mumbled, shifting uncomfortably at the blatant reminder.

“Of course he was,” she agreed.  “He's tough—like me!”

That earned her a tight little smile that she missed completely.  “Yes, he is,” Cain allowed.  “Still, you promised that we wouldn't talk about that year—ever.”

“But—”

" Promised," he stated flatly.

Gin heaved a sigh to let him know what she thought of that particular promise.  In a last ditch effort to put an end to that particular discussion, Cain reached over to retrieve a Reese's peanut butter cup tree out of the nightstand on his side of the bed.  Gin squealed loudly and snatched it out of Cain's hand as he winced at the sheer volume of her outburst.  “So what was your favorite Christmas, then?” she asked, her words garbled since she hadn't bothered to swallow the first huge bite of candy before uttering the question.

Cain's expression turned thoughtful as he settled back against the thick, fluffy pillows once more.

“This one,” he finally said, flipping back through the album to the year labeled 'Christmas 2042'.

Gin leaned forward, her candy still cradled carefully in her hand as she peered at the holiday images from the year in question.  “That one?” she echoed, shaking her head slowly.  “Really?”

“Yeah,” Cain said at length, a tender smile surfacing on his lips.  “Did you think it'd be a different one?”

Gin laughed softly as she polished off the candy and crawled over Cain to check the nightstand for another tree.  Coming up empty, she spared a moment to pout at him before flopping back onto the bed once more.  “Oof,” he grunted as she slumped against him once more.

“It wasn't Sebastian's first Christmas?  Or the first year that we had Evan and Jillian, too?  I mean, that was the first time our family was really complete,” she pointed out.

“No,” Cain replied.  “I think that one was my favorite.”

“Why?”

“It just was,” he insisted.

She smiled and leaned up to kiss his cheek before settling against him once more.  “What part of it made it your favorite?”

Wrapping his arms around her, he sighed.  “Well, baby girl, let's see . . .”


“What do you want for Christmas, Cain?”

Cain glanced up from the painting he was working on as Gin breezed into the room with a stack of laundry to put away and a bright smile on her pretty face.  “Christmas?” he echoed, shaking away the almost mindless stupor that he always seemed to fall into whenever he was working on his art.

“That's so cute,” Gin remarked as she peered around Cain at the work in progress: a moment frozen in time as Bas slept soundly with little Evan and tiny Jillian piled on top of him.  “You have a lot of talent, Zelig-sensei.”

“Just a little,” he deadpanned with a little smile as a hint of pink tinged his cheeks at the praise.

“Nope, a lot,” she insisted, leaning up to kiss him on the chin.  “Anyway, what do you want for Christmas?”

Sparing a moment to kiss her forehead before reaching for one of the paint cloths that littered the work table beside him, he frowned thoughtfully.  “I already have everything I need, baby girl,” he remarked as he wiped his fingers meticulously with the cloth.

Gin made a face and pushed against his chest playfully.  “It's the one time a year that you're allowed to be selfish,” she insisted with a stubborn shake of her head.  “There's got to be something you want.”

“Whatever you buy for me is good enough,” he assured her.  “Maybe a sexy little red lace teddy or something . . .”

Twittering in an almost embarrassed kind of way, Gin hid her face against him for a moment.  “You'd look really funny in one of those,” she pointed out.

“I figured you'd wear one for me,” he muttered, rolling his eyes at her bald statement.

“Then it wouldn't be for you,” she said.

“I beg to differ,” he retorted.  “It sure as hell had better be for me.”

Gin shook her head at his incorrigible statements and stepped away from him to put the laundry away up in the loft.

Frowning as he tried to critique the work in progress, Cain wrapped an arm over his stomach, resting his elbow on his clenched fist and curling his fingers over his lips as he surveyed it.  “So what do you want for Christmas?” he called after her.

“Hmm,” she drawled, her voice muffled by the closet  as she stacked a couple of clean sweaters on the shelf that she could barely reach, “I think I'd like for you to make something for me.”

Cain nodded to himself without paying a lot of attention to that.  It wasn't uncommon for her to make that kind of request, anyway.  Usually he did exactly that, anyway.  Last year it had been a marble sculpture of their dog, sprawled on his back in front of the fireplace in the living room.  The year before that, it was a painting of a very pregnant Gin, napping on the chaise lounge in the sun room . . . “I can do that.”

She hurried down the stairs and skittered across the floor then pushed herself up onto the worktable.  “No, I mean something that doesn't involve paint or sculpting,” she reiterated.  “Something really special.”

That earned her a raised-eyebrow-ed look.  “You don't think that the things I've made for you are special?” he asked.

“No, of course I do!” she insisted, waving a hand dismissively.  “Those things are all really great, but what about something that you're not used to doing or making?”

“And what kind of thing would that be?” he asked.

She frowned.  “I don't know . . . something like . . . hmm . . . cook me dinner or bake a cake for me or something.”

Cain blinked and slowly shook his head.  “Bake a cake for you?”

She giggled.  “Then you can be my cake fairy instead.”

He snorted since the idea of him making a cake was fairly far-fetched, as far as he was concerned.  “You want me to bake you a cake.”  It wasn't a question.

She nodded happily and clapped her hands—something that Evan did, too.  “Well, yeah . . . or something like that.”

Letting out a long gust of air, Cain slowly shook his head.  She made it sound so much easier than he figured it would be.  After all, his cooking skills were severely limited; just ask his oldest daughter, Bellaniece.  She'd spent her youth eating frozen meals that just had to be heated up, peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, boxed macaroni and cheese dinners, and the occasional grilled cheese . . . Making a cake?  Somehow, he thought that it might well have 'disaster' written all over it . . .

“So if I'm supposed to make you something like that,” he remarked, deliberately keeping his eyes on the painting he'd been working on, “what are you going to do for me?”

Hooking her hands around her knees, Gin kicked her feet in an idle sort of way.  “I've got a couple ideas,” she ventured with a smile.

“And where'd you get this idea, anyway?” he had to ask.

“Oh, there was a really good movie on the Women's Network about a couple who decided to make their own gifts one year because they wanted to rekindle their marriage.”

“We need to rekindle our marriage?” he asked before he could stop himself.

Gin giggled.  “Of course not,” she insisted.  “But it made me think.  Didn't you say before that your favorite presents have been the ones that Sebastian made you in preschool?  That plaster cast of his hand or the seashell note card holder?  Oh, and that adorable macaroni ashtray?”

“Well, the macaroni ashtray wasn't the greatest idea, if you think about it.  Burning pasta kind of stinks,” Cain said.

“But it's still sitting on your desk, isn't it?” she parried.

Cain chuckled.  “It is,” he agreed easily enough.  “That doesn't mean that I use it.”

Gin laughed, too, hopping off the table and pausing long enough to give Cain a quick squeeze before scurrying toward the doorway.  “Anyway, I have every confidence that you'll find the perfect thing to make for me that doesn't involve this studio.”

He watched her go before heaving a long-suffering sigh as he slowly turned to face the painting once more.  A homemade gift that didn't involve the utilization of his artistic talents, huh?

It was going to be a lot harder than it sounded, wasn't it . . .?


“I fucking hate flying.”

Kagome Izayoi sighed and slowly shook her head.  If she'd heard that complaint once, she'd heard it twenty times in the last hour, which didn't bode well for the international flight that was only the first part of their itinerary.  “I know you do,” she replied reasonably—maybe a little too reasonably.  “But you do love your daughter.”

He snorted loudly but didn't argue that with her as his ears twitched a few times.  “If that bastard she married had any common sense at all, he'd have brought her home for Christmas,” InuYasha grumbled.  “He knows damn well that flying is hard on her brother.”

Sparing a moment to glance at the boy in question, Kagome frowned.  Mikio had actually fallen asleep shortly after take off, probably because of the anti-nausea medication that Kichiro had prescribed for him that was known to cause drowsiness.  Sparing a surreptitious glance at her mate, who looked like he was ready to sink his claws into the nearest target, she couldn't help but think that maybe Kichiro should have prescribed the same thing for his father, too . . .

“It's a shame that Kichiro and Bellaniece couldn't make the trip this year,” she mused instead, hoping to distract InuYasha from his current irritation.

“Eh, that little fucker could've made it,” Ryomaru, InuYasha and Kagome's oldest son, remarked.  “He just didn't want to.”

“Baka,” Nezumi, a.k.a. Deirdre, muttered.  “Isabelle has important exams coming up, and spending the next couple of weeks, beating down her cousins won't leave her enough time to study.”

“Exams are stupid,” Morio Izayoi piped up.  He was sitting across from InuYasha and Kagome between Mikio and Gunnar, the latter of whom was quietly listening to music on his cell phone and trying his level best to ignore Morio completely—or so Kagome thought.

“Almost as stupid as you are,” Gunnar shot back casually enough.

Morio broke into a wide grin.  “So you're listening to me, after all, Mamo-chan!”

“Shut up,” Gunnar retorted.

“You could take a hint from your cousin,” Nezumi remarked, effectively interrupting the escalation of the argument that she knew was forthcoming otherwise.  “Your marks aren't very good, Morio.”

“But it's the holidays, Mama,” he protested as his grin widened.  “'Don we now our gay apparel . . .'” He sang as his smile dimmed slightly and the sparkle in his eyes grew brighter.  “Why the hell would someone wear gay apparel unless they're gay to start with?”

“Are you stupid?” Gunnar muttered under his breath.

“Of course he is,” Mikio slurred in response to Gunnar's question, proving that he wasn't quite sleeping just yet though he didn't open his eyes, either.

Gunnar snorted indelicately but didn't comment as he retrieved a book out of his knapsack and proceeded to ignore Morio completely.

Morio sat up suddenly and smacked Gunnar in the middle of the chest with the back of his hand.  “Oh, yeah!  You haven’t laid your bet, Mamo-kun!”

Shifting his gaze to the side, he stared blankly at Morio for a long moment.  “Bet?” he echoed, clearly unsure as to what, exactly, Morio was talking about.

Morio chuckled and dug a small notepad out of his backpack before licking the end of his thumb and flipping through the pages.  “Mikio said ten, I said fifteen, and Izzy-chan said seven.”

“For what?” Gunnar asked again.

“For how many centimeters Bas has grown since last summer,” Mikio clarified drowsily.

Gunnar snorted again. “That's stupid,” he scoffed.  “It's only been a few months.  There's no way he's grown more than three, tops.”

Morio laughed and grabbed Gunnar's pen long enough to write it down in his book.

“If Bas finds out about that bet and beats on you, don't come crying to me,” Ryomaru remarked despite the grin on his face.  “Put me down for nine.”

Morio shot his father a cheesy grin and happily wrote that down, too.

“I can't wait to see Evan and Jillian,” Kagome remarked, ignoring the topic of conversation.  “I wish they lived closer . . .”

“Like I said,” InuYasha grumbled, “if Gin hadn't married that bastard—”

Kagome wrinkled her nose.  “You could learn a thing or two from Cain,” she pointed out indelicately.  “Gin said that he's going to do something special for her for Christmas.  They're making presents for each other this year!”

“Keh!  He makes shit for her every year,” InuYasha scoffed.  “Pictures he could've taken easier with a damn camera and lumps of stone he scratched at a little.”

Rolling her eyes at InuYasha's unflattering assessment of Cain Zelig's artistic abilities, Kagome grasped the nearest ear and tugged.  “His art is world-famous, dog-boy, and this year, he's not making her anything like that. Gin said that they're both making things that they're not familiar with, and I think that's sweet and caring and thoughtful.  Don't you?”

“Ow, wench!” InuYasha complained, ignoring the menacing tone of his mate's normally soft voice.  “Just goes to show how hella dumb he is, if you ask me.”

Kagome sighed and let go of InuYasha's ear.  Even if he did think that the gesture was sweet, he'd never admit as much, not about something Cain was doing, anyway.

“If he wasn't so damn dumb, he'd just do what any other normal person does: march his ass into the nearest store and buy something that his mate will actually like.”

Kagome snorted—a noise that she rarely made even if InuYasha did it often enough for the both of them.  “You know, I think they have the right idea,” she insisted slowly, thoughtfully.  “In fact, I think they're right on the money.”

She felt InuYasha's reluctant stare without having to look to verify it.  “I mean, if you did something for me instead of giving something to me, then you wouldn't gripe about having to tote it back to Japan, either, now would you?”

“Keh!  Ain't nothing you don't already got, wench,” InuYasha grumbled.

Kagome wasn't finished, and now she had the complete and utter attention of the rest of the travelers, too.  “You know what would make me really happy, InuYasha?”

Definitely nervous, if the twitching of his ears and the way his eyes kept shifting from side to side meant anything at all.  For a moment, she didn't think she was going to take the bait.  She ought to have known better.  He was nothing if not too curious for his own good.  “You said that being with me made you happy, Kagome,” he muttered almost accusingly, his cheeks pinking just a little.

“Being with you does make me happy,” she replied.  “But if you really wanted to give me something special for Christmas . . .”

“Don't fall for it, old man,” Ryomaru mumbled under his breath.

“Spit it out, wench,” InuYasha growled.

She smiled sweetly.  He nearly whined.  “It would be the best present, ever, if you would promise to be nice to your son-in-law for the entire visit—no matter what.”

Ryomaru choked.  Nezumi covered her mouth.  The three boys cast Kagome looks filled with varying degrees of admiration.

“What? ” InuYasha blurted, his expression registering his abject disbelief at her very simple request.

Kagome laughed.  “You heard me, dog-boy.  From the time they pick us up at the airport till they drop us off to go home, no fussing, no fighting, and no disparaging remarks.  How about it?”

“Keh!”

“It's not like I asked you to be nice to Sesshoumaru or anything,,” she pointed out.

He snorted again.  “Like that'd ever happen,” he growled.  “There ain't no way in hell that I'm going to agree to—”

“But it'd make Baa-chan so happy,” Morio chimed in.  If he had been sitting next to InuYasha, Kagome had little doubt that he'd have gotten himself clobbered for his commentary.  As it was, InuYasha snorted yet again—had to be some kind of record or another—looking like he'd sorely love to get his hands on the sword that she'd barely managed to talk him into packing instead of wearing.

“Keh!” InuYasha snorted yet again, crossing his arms over his chest and flopping back in his seat hard.  “Yeah, well, Baa-chan can just—”

“Check it out!  The old man's gonna end up spending Christmas Eve on the fucking sofa,” Ryomaru muttered to his wife.

“You could be nice and stop him before it comes to that,” she remarked philosophically.

“Are you kidding?  No damn way!  Sink or swim, Nez.  Sink or swim.”

“Now, now,” Kagome interjected with a bright smile before the low growl escaping InuYasha could escalate into anything worse.  “If your father doesn't want to do the one thing that could really, truly make me happy this year, that's his choice.  I wouldn't make him sleep on the sofa for it.  After all, Christmas is the season of giving—that's what Gin says—and if your father would rather not give me the peace of mind that would come with knowing that he's going to be on his best behavior, then it's fine.”

The growling bumped up a notch or two in intensity.  “I never fucking said I didn't want to give you whatever the hell you want, wench!  You're twisting my words around!”

“I'm doing nothing of the sort,” she insisted.

His loud snort stated that he believed otherwise.

“Even if you don't want to do it for me,” Kagome went on, completely ignoring InuYasha's outburst, “think about how happy you'd make Gin this year.  After all, she's been stuck in the middle between you and Cain since the beginning.”  She paused for dramatic impact then let out a long, deep sigh—a little melodramatic, sure, but drastic times called for drastic measures, right?  “I remember the sight of her, lying there, hooked up to all those tubes and wires . . . how frail she was; how diminished . . . I really thought that we might . . . might lose her . . . and you could barely get along with Cain then.”  She shook her head sadly.  “You've always said that you'd do anything for your children, but I guess that doesn't mean that you'd actually try to get along with someone they love, even if you don't.”

“Wow, she's so good at that,” Nezumi mumbled under her breath, an appreciative glimmer lighting the depths of her violet gaze as she watched InuYasha's face contort into the a mix of acute irritation and something nearer to grudging guilt.

“Hells, yes,” Ryomaru replied.

“Baa-chan rocks,” Morio breathed.

Gunnar grunted something unintelligible before grumbling, “Scary as hell.”

“Laying it on a little thick, ain'tcha, Kagome?” InuYasha gritted out despite his reddened cheeks.

“Not if it’s working,” she countered, batting her eyelashes for good measure.

“He's hosed,” Ryomaru muttered to Nezumi.

“Yeah, he is,” she murmured back.

“Fuck! ” InuYasha growled.

“Unless you don't want to give me the one thing that would make me happy this year,” Kagome went on, figuring that she was twisting the proverbial knife and enjoying it far more than she probably should.

“Fucking fine!” InuYasha bellowed, crossing his arms over his chest in a completely sullen kind of way.  “But if he starts it—”

“You'll be the bigger man and turn the other cheek, of course,” she cut in smoothly.  “This is going to be the best Christmas, ever!”

InuYasha snorted indelicately.  “Says you, wench.  Says you.”


Frowning in concentration as he read through the directions for the tenth time, Cain tapped his claws on the white marble counter top in the kitchen of the bright and airy Zelig mansion as the morning sun spilled through the huge windows over the breakfast nook.  “Cream butter and sugar until light and fluffy, add eggs alternately with the flour mixture . . .” he mumbled to himself.  “Doesn't sound too hard . . . cream, butter, sugar, eggs . . .” He scrawled those things down on the grocery list he'd been making.

“He's at the thirty . . . the twenty-five . . . the twenty . . . Can he do it, folks?  He's heading for the end zone!  At the fifteen . . . the ten . . . the five . . . Touchdown, New England!  Bas Zelig's a football god!”

Cain blinked and turned his head to watch as eleven-year-old Bas ran into the room with his favorite football tucked under his arm.  He started to hiss like the din of a cheering crowd, only to stop short when he spotted his father staring at him.  “Uh, D-d-dad.  Didn't know you were in here,” he muttered, cheeks reddening with embarrassment as he slipped the football behind his back.

“Nice touchdown, football god,” Cain replied dryly despite the hint of a smile on his face.  “Better work on your victory dance, though.”

Bas made a face as his face darkened a little more, and he scowled at his father.  “I was wondering . . .”

“What's that?” Cain asked, turning his attention back to the recipe card in front of him once more.

“Do you . . .?” Bas sighed, as though he were trying to find a way to ask him about whatever he had on his mind.  “Do you think you could talk Mom out of going to see Coach tomorrow morning?”

“Your coach?  Why's she going to see him?”

Again, Bas sighed as he dropped onto the bar stool across the counter from Cain.  “I told her that I heard from Kyle Jackson that Coach was going to put me on the defensive line next year,” Bas explained with a grimace, “and, well, you know Mom . . .”

Cain grimaced, too, since he could figure out the rest on his own.  It wasn't really surprising that the coach would want to put Bas on defense.  Bas had always been large for his age, and along with the height came the weight, as well.  The thing was, Gin had always fancied Bas to be more of an offensive type player—his current position was quarterback—and moving him to the other side would be considered a bit of an insult, as far as she was concerned.  Knowing Bas, he didn't really care since he simply loved the game, but Gin?  She'd been the first one to buy her boy a football, and while Cain had played catch with Bas a number of times, more often than not, it was Gin who had spent hours in the yard, tossing the pigskin with her son.

“I'll talk to her,” Cain promised.

Only then did Bas finally smile though he did look a little dubious.  “So what are you doing, anyway?” he asked, nodding at the list on the counter.

“Your mom wants me to make her a cake for Christmas,” Cain muttered as he read through the recipe again.

“No way,” Bas remarked solemnly.

“Yup,” Cain replied.

“Pat-a-cake!  Pat-a-cake!” year-and-a-half old Evan insisted as he bounced into the kitchen, still wearing the footy-pajamas that he'd worn to bed the night before.  He skittered over to his father, and Cain scooped him up, sitting him on the counter beside the cookbook.  “Pat-a-cake, Daddy?  Pat-a-cake?”

“Anyway, I figured I'd make one of those spice cakes your mama likes so much,” Cain went on, holding up his hands so that Evan could smack his little palms against them as he babbled the nursery rhyme.

The dubiousness in Bas' expression increased about tenfold.  “I don't know, Dad . . .” he drawled.

Cain rolled his eyes.  “What's that supposed to mean?”

Bas wasn't cowed.  “You don't know the first thing about baking, do you?”

“That's what the recipe's for,” Cain clarified.

“Yeah, but that recipe is for people who know something about baking, to start with.  Maybe you ought to go to the bookstore.  See if they have Baking for Dummies or something like that . . .”

Cain scowled at Bas for a full minute before answering.  “Do you want to be an orphan, Bas?”

Bas snorted and hopped off the stool before stepping around the counter and picking up Evan.  “That’s what I'm afraid of,” he shot back as he hurried out of the kitchen with his little brother waving over his shoulder.  “C'mon, Evan.  Let's go watch Power Puppies while Dad tries to blow up the house.”

Cain shook his head at his son's show of support.

Okay, so it was true.  Cain really didn't know exactly how to bake a cake.  Still, after reading the recipe, it didn't seem that difficult.  Besides, he was going to practice a few times to make sure that the final product came out well, wasn't he?


Frowning in concentration, Gin scowled at the tangle of yarn dangling from the knitting needles.  It didn't quite look like a sweater yet, of course which didn't mean that it wouldn't when she was finished.  After all, people made sweaters and stuff every day, right?

“Right!” she reassured herself as she settled back to get to work once more.

“Hey, baby girl.  Have you seen my black coat?”

Smothering a tiny yelp, Gin shoved the yarn under the sofa cushion before whipping around to smile at her mate.  “The black one?  I took it to be dry cleaned,” she informed him.  “Your tan coat's in the hall closet, though.”

He nodded, searching around the desk in the studio for his keys.  “Okay.  I'm going to run to the store. Do you need anything?”

“Nope,” she replied then giggled.  “Well, maybe a Reese's peanut butter cup tree or two.”

Cain rolled his eyes but smiled as he tossed his keys into the air and caught them a few times.  “Oh, yeah, promise me something, okay?”

“Anything at all, Zelig-sensei,” Gin insisted, hurrying over to wrap her arms around his waist.

“Go-o-o-od,” he drawled.  “Promise me you won't go yell at Coach Mitchell.”

She wrinkled her nose and tried to pull away from Cain.  He held on.  “I wasn't going to yell at him,” she insisted stubbornly.

“Bas thinks you're going to yell at him,” Cain pointed out reasonably.

Gin snorted.  “Moving Sebastian to defense?” she grumbled.  “Why in the world would they do that?  Sebastian's a quarterback, not a big lug of a defensive lineman.”

“And Bas doesn't care, one way or the other, you know.  He just loves to play football . . .” Cain said, deciding that he'd be better off not to remind Gin that Bas was, indeed, a pretty big 'lug'.

“He's only moving him to defense because Cal Jenkins got ran over last season,” she contested hotly.  Cal Jenkins was another eleven year old on the team and the largest one on the defensive side of the ball.  “Moving Sebastian could impact the rest of his football career, Cain, and—”

“And he's eleven years old, Gin.  I don't think that playing defense for a year or two in the pee-wee league is really going to ruin the rest of his—Wait, did you just say 'career'?”

“Yes, his career,” Gin grunted stubbornly, crossing her arms over her chest as she shot Cain a mulish sort of scowl.  “If he gets put on defense now, then he'll be stuck there once he gets to middle school next year, too, and if that happens, then he'll end up there through high school.  By the time he goes to college, the coaches won't even give him a chance to show that he's a good quarterback, and if he decided that he wanted to play professionally, then the entire country would be trying to knock my baby onto his heinie!”

“Leave it alone, baby girl,” he insisted mildly.  “Let the boy play.”

She didn't look pleased, but she did grumble something that was as close to a 'yes' as Cain Zelig was likely to get from her.  His mind just didn't understand the intricacies of football, she decided.  After all, she knew she was right, but Cain was ever the artist, wasn't he?  Too dreamy, given to thinking in terms of what he wanted to happen, not necessarily what really did, and even then, Sebastian loved football.  He loved playing quarterback.

She sighed as Cain kissed her forehead and headed for the door.  “Don't forget,” she called after him, still not entirely forgiving him for making her promise not to go talk to the coach.  “Mama and Papa's flight gets in around six!”

“As if I could forget something like that,” he muttered without missing a step.  “I'm just running to the grocery store.  I'll be back.”

Gin heaved a sigh and shook her head as Cain disappeared out of the studio they shared.  She loved the holidays, and having her family here was just the icing on the cake, as far as she was concerned.  “It's going to be the best Christmas, ever!” she told herself with a giggle.

That was right, wasn't it?  All she had to do was finish the sweater she'd decided to make for her mate . . .


Crossing his arms over his chest, Cain stood back and waited for the boys to try the slices of cake he'd set before them.  “Well?”

Mikio shifted uncomfortably, peering to his left and right respectively at the other boys.  Morio intercepted the look and grinned.  Gunnar stared straight down at the plate before him, his hanyou ears twitching a little nervously.  Bas bit his lip.  “It smells a little . . . burnt,” Bas remarked slowly, carefully.

“It's not burnt,” Cain grumbled, crossing his arms over his chest and staring at each of the boys in turn.  “Come on, Mikio.  You try it.”

Mikio shot him an almost terrified glance.  “I-I-I don't want to,” he nearly whined.

Cain rolled his eyes.

“Maybe if it had some . . . frosting or something,” Morio remarked, poking his piece with the fork.

“Frosting's nothing but sugar,” Gunnar pointed out, still staring down at his slice.  Even at eleven years old, Gunnar had already developed a dislike for anything that was overly sweet.  It wasn't surprising that he didn't want frosting on his piece of cake.

“I know, but at least then you wouldn't taste the cake, would you?” Morio muttered in an aside that Cain figured he wasn't supposed to hear.

Gunnar blinked a few times, as though he was considering which would be worse: the overly sweet frosting or the taste of the actual cake.  “ That would take a hell of a lot of frosting.”

“You know, it's not too late to take your presents back to the store,” Cain growled as he stomped around the counter in the middle of the kitchen to grab a can of frosting that he'd bought at the store and chucking it in the general direction of the breakfast nook. The boys quite literally dove for it, and it wasn't surprising that Bas was the one to emerge victorious, given that he was quite a bit brawnier than any of his cousins or uncle.  He glopped damn near a fourth of the can onto his cake before passing it on to Gunnar, who followed Bas' example almost to the letter.

“Zat, Bubby?  Zat?”

Bas blinked and glanced down at Evan, who had wandered into the kitchen and was holding onto the edge of the cloth bench cushion with his tiny claws dug into the fabric as he tried to see onto the table.  “Uh, nothing you want, Evan,” Bas muttered, frowning at his little brother.

Evan wrinkled his nose and giggled.  “Stinky!”

Cain rolled his eyes.  “Thanks, Evan,” he grumbled, lifting a hand, indicating that the boys should hurry up and dig in.

“It's like a brick,” Morio remarked, jamming his fork into the frosting covered lump before him.  “Check it out!”

“It sounds like one, too,” Mikio allowed as Morio thumped the cake a few times.

“Knock that off before you break the plate,” Gunnar said as he grabbed Morio's hand to stop him from slapping the cake down once more.

“Oh, for God's sake,” Cain growled, snatching Bas' plate off the table and jamming the fork down hard.  Without stopping to think about what he was doing, he stuffed the bite into his mouth and chewed.

Twice.

And then he turned on his heel and stalked over to the trashcan to spit out the burnt mass.

“Uh . . . can we go now, Dad?” Bas asked after a long moment of dead silence.

Cain didn't answer until he'd stalked over to the refrigerator and slugged back a few healthy swallows of milk without bothering with a glass.  “Get the hell out of here,” he muttered before tilting the jug to his lips again.

The boys had never moved faster.  Even Mikio fairly ran out of the kitchen.  Bas was the last one out since he stopped to scoop up Evan, lest Cain decide to try to get him to sample the cake, too.

Cain sighed and recapped the milk with a scowl.  Okay, so the first try was a bust.  It was a setback, sure, but he'd get it right before Christmas.  He still had two weeks to practice.


“So what do you think?”

Nezumi lowered the Popular Mechanics magazine she'd been reading to look at the very large, dark blue square of knitted yarn that Gin was holding up for her inspection.  “It's nice,” she said with a slow nod.  “Is that for Evan?”

“No, why would it be for him?” Gin asked with a frown as she turned her creation to stare thoughtfully at it.

“Isn't it a baby blanket?”

“A baby—?  Oh, no!  I'm making a sweater for Cain!” Gin replied with a bright grin.

Nezumi blinked.  “That's for . . . Cain?”

Gin's smile faltered as she eyed the piece critically.  “You don't think it's too small, do you?  It's the back of the sweater.”

“Uh, no,” Nezumi said quickly.  No, if anything, it looked like it might fit two of Cain—or more.

“Oh, that's a pretty blanket, Gin,” Kagome remarked as she strolled into the living room with a tray of tea and cookies.  “When did you take up knitting?”

Nezumi bit her lip and hurriedly lifted the magazine to cover her face before she burst out laughing.  Poor Gin looked genuinely perplexed as to why her mother would think that she was making a blanket.

“No, it's the sweater I'm making for Zelig-sensei,” Gin replied.

Kagome paused before setting the tray down .  “Is it some kind of new style?  A wraparound or something?”

Gin giggled.  “Of course not, Mama!  This is the back of the sweater!”

Kagome's mouth rounded in an 'oh' though no sound came out with it.  Nezumi figured that she was either trying to think of something kind to say or she was debating whether or not to tell her daughter that it was entirely too big for the intended recipient.  “It's . . . a bit large, don't you think, Gin?” she finally said.

Gin blinked.  “You think so?”

Kagome smiled and handed Gin a cup of tea.  “Maybe just a little.”

“But I used another of his sweaters as a pattern,” Gin replied with a shake of her head as she slowly lifted the tea to her lips.

“Well, you could always wash it in really hot water before you give it to him.  Maybe that'll shrink it some,” Nezumi offered as she set the magazine aside and pulled Jillian onto the sofa to sit between Gin and her.  Jillian giggled and pointed at the plate of cookies before casting Nezumi a rather bashful smile.  “Here you go,” she said, retrieving a snowman sprinkled with iridescent sanding sugar.

“Sanks!” Jillian said just before she nibbled a bit off the snowman's hat.

Nezumi grinned and tousled the girl's silvery hair.

“Seems to me like a sweater is a pretty difficult thing to knit for a beginner,” Kagome went on as she settled in a nearby chair.  “Maybe you should have started with a scarf or something like that.”

Gin sighed as she carefully folded up the back of the sweater and stowed it into the pretty purple knitting basket on the floor beside her.  “Oh, I'm sure that it'll be okay,” she decided.  “Besides, he's trying to make something special for me, too, so I have to try my best, don't I?”

Nezumi didn't miss the slightly anxious lilt to Kagome's gaze.  No doubt Mikio told her exactly what Morio had said earlier: that Cain's first attempt at baking hadn't turned out well.  Nezumi figured that she'd give Kagome a day, tops, before she ventured into the kitchen to help the poor man out.

“How the hell are you supposed to tell it's fucking Christmas around here if you ain't even put up a damn tree yet?” InuYasha growled as he stomped into the living room just behind Cain.

“We always go out on Christmas Eve to get the tree,” Cain said in what could only be described as a bored tone of voice.  Ryomaru strode in just behind the two, and when he spotted Nezumi, he shot her a cheesy grin.

“Every other fucking person in the state of Maine has their damn trees up already,” InuYasha went on stubbornly.

“Your daughter likes to wait till Christmas Eve,” Cain pointed out.  “I'd be more than happy to put the tree up whenever she wants to, and she likes Christmas Eve.  Besides, there's a tree in the foyer and one upstairs in the hallway, too, not to mention the one in the studio or the one in the kitchen.”

InuYasha snorted.  “Those ain't trees.  Those are fucked-up pieces of plastic—and the one in the kitchen is white, for kami's sake!”

Cain stopped and turned long enough to pin InuYasha with a very thoughtful stare.  “If it bothers you so much, I'd be more than happy to go out and cut down a tree for you to have in the guest room,” he offered reasonably enough.

“Keh!  That's hardly the point,” InuYasha growled.  “You're—”

“InuYasha,” Kagome interrupted sweetly.  Nezumi almost laughed when the hanyou shot his wife a glower then took a step back in retreat.

InuYasha's cheeks pinked slightly as he crossed his arms over his chest, his ears twitching almost nervously atop his head.  “It's your house; put the fucking tree up whenever you want to,” he grumbled as he turned on his heel and stomped out of the room.  He stopped on the threshold but didn't look over his shoulder as he mumbled something that almost sounded like, “Thank you for inviting us,” before he continued on his way, leaving behind a rather surprised-looking Cain in his wake.

“Did I . . . miss something . . .?” Cain finally asked, still staring at the empty archway where InuYasha had taken his unceremonious departure.

“Oh, nothing,” Kagome demurred, innocently sipping her tea.

Cain nodded slowly though he still didn't look like he quite comprehended exactly what had happened.  In the end, he gave a curt shake of his head and continued on his way through the living room and toward the kitchen.


Straightening up after grabbing the two grocery bags out of the front seat of the SUV, Cain shouldered the door closed and shook his head.  There was a reason why he tended to hibernate in his mansion.  The brief trip to the grocery store had brought it all into focus very, very clearly.

He'd realized a long, long time ago that there were two kinds of people in the world at Christmastime.  There were the ones who could and did extend their good-will to everyone, including the little old woman with two heaping grocery carts—It'd be horrible, wouldn't it, to make the octogenarian stand in line to wait for her turn, just like everyone else?—and the ones who loathed good cheer and did their level best to ruin everyone else's moods within a thousand foot radius.  He'd run into both types: the woman who seemed to think that the world was going to end because Cain had first gotten into the express lane for fifteen items or less but had sixteen items, and the woman ahead of him in line who decided that the old woman with the two carts of groceries needed to go through the express lane.  In all actuality, though, the one person Cain really had felt sorry for was the kid behind the cash register who had to deal with both of those types all day, every day.

Well, with any luck at all, he wouldn't have to make another trip to the store before Christmas.  Because of his first failure in the kitchen, he'd run out of ingredients.  This time, however, he was a little wiser, and he'd bought enough to do a few trial runs of the cake, and with any luck at all, he would have enough to do the real cake on Christmas Eve, too.

He'd almost made it into the mansion when the sounds of laughter drew his attention.  Glancing over toward the side of the yard, Cain did a double take, his eyes widening as he spotted Bas, Morio, Mikio, and Gunnar, but it wasn't the boys that made him hurriedly set down the bags on the wide stone wall that wrapped around the porch, but the sight of his youngest son being chucked through the air that did it.

“Bas!  What the hell are you doing?” he demanded as he ran across the lawn.

Bas caught Evan—Morio had tossed him—and paused long enough to glance at his father before tossing Evan to Gunnar.  “He wanted to play catch,” Bas said simply, as though it were the most normal thing in the world.

Cain skidded to a stop and snapped his mouth closed as Evan's riotous giggling filled the air.  “Again, Gunnar!  Again!” he yelled between his bouts of laughter.

Gunnar actually looked mildly amused as he chucked Evan to Mikio, whose ear twitched nervously, but he seemed more steady than he had since they'd arrived.  He caught Evan easily enough and passed him on to Morio.

Letting out a deep breath, Cain gave a mental shrug.  “Just don't drop him,” he warned, “and if you do, don't leave a mark or your mother'll have your ass.”

“Okay,” Bas called after him as Cain turned to head back inside.

He stopped long enough to retrieve the bags he'd set down when he'd first seen the boys tossing Evan around before he let himself into the house.

“Is that for me?” Jillian asked, wrapping her hands up in her skirt and twisting her body from side to side in a bashful sort of way.

Cain chuckled and hunkered down to give her a kiss on the cheek as she tried to peek inside the bags.  “No, nosy.  You get your surprises on Christmas morning,” he reminded her.

She giggled and ran into the living room ahead of him, her little silvery piggy tails bouncing jauntily with each step she took.

“Welcome home, Zelig-sensei,” Gin said as she stepped off the stairs and hurried over to kiss him.  “How were the roads?”

“Not too bad if you're careful,” he told her with a smile.  “Planning on going somewhere?”

She wrinkled her nose and followed him toward the kitchen.  “Papa and Mama were going to, though.  They mailed their Christmas presents from Japan, and the mailman didn't bring the box out earlier.”

“Speaking of your papa,” Cain remarked as he set the bags on the counter.  “He's been acting a little strange, don't you think?”

She giggled and slipped her arms around his waist.  “He's fine,” she insisted.  “Maybe he's finally figured out just how wonderful you really are.”

“Yeah, don't hold your breath on that, baby girl,” he said with a decisive snort.  “Hell will freeze over before that happens.”

Gin rolled her eyes.  “It could happen,” she argued.  To Cain, however, she sounded dubious, too.  “Oh!  Ben called just after you left and wanted you to call him back.  He said it wasn't that important, though, so he didn't bother calling your cell.”

“All right,” he said as her arms dropped away.

“Don't forget to ask him if he's coming for Christmas dinner.”

“Like he'd miss a chance to have your cooking,” Cain stated as he grabbed a bottle of water out of the refrigerator.  “He's kind of a leech like that.”

“Be nice, Zelig-sensei.  It's the season to be jolly, remember?” she chided, her voice drifting back to him since she was already in the living room once more.

“Thought I was being nice,” he told her, following her into the room.

“Hmph,” she snorted as she straightened the cushions on the sofa.  “You haven't seen the boys, have you?  They've been a little quieter than normal . . .”

“Yeah,” Cain said rather absently as he scanned the stack of the day's mail.  “They're outside playing football with Evan.”

“Oh,” Gin said then giggled.  “That's so sweet of them.”

Cain grunted in response as he tore open a letter from the Maine Literary Society.  'Twas the season for donations, after all . . .

Kagome hurried into the room, adjusting a dark blue sweater over her slender hips.  “Are you sure that you don't mind if we borrow your car, Gin?” she asked.  “We won't be gone long.”

“Oh, no, of course not,” she replied.  “Take all the time you need.”

She laughed.  “Your father hates shopping, and he hates it even more here during this time of year.”

Cain wrinkled his nose, mostly because he'd just thought the same thing not too long ago.  Having anything in common with InuYasha Izayoi just didn't set well with him, after all.

Kagome wandered over to the huge bay windows that overlooked the yard.  “Oh, there's Mikio . . . I was going to ask him if he wanted to g—Oh!” she exclaimed, leaning closer to the window.  “Gin?  The boys are outside tossing Evan around!”

“Tossing him around?” she echoed, obviously confused by her mother's statement.

Kagome nodded.  “Yes, as in, Sebastian caught him then . . . tossed him to Mamoruzen . . .”

That got Gin's attention quickly enough.  Cain could feel the fabricated rise in the air when she darted past him to peer outside.  “Cain!” she exclaimed, hurrying away from the window to go stop the boys.  “I thought you said that they were playing!”

Cain blinked and looked up from the solicitation letter in his hand.  “I said they were playing football with Evan,” he reminded her.

Her mouth dropped open as color blossomed in her cheeks.  “Play—You didn't say that they were using him as the football!” she insisted.

“I did, too, and besides, he likes it,” Cain explained, sounding completely unimpressed with her obvious concern.  “Relax.  I told them not to drop him.”

“You told them not to—?  Cain Zelig!  That's dangerous!” she insisted.

Without another word, Cain watched as Gin, with Kagome close behind, hurried out of the living room and toward the foyer.

“What the hell was that all about?” InuYasha grumbled as he scowled at the slamming door.

“The boys are being a little rough with Evan, or so the women think,” Cain replied, turning his attention back to the mail in his slack hand.

InuYasha snorted, which, in Cain's opinion was pretty much all there was to say.  He rather agreed, even if he'd never admit as much out loud.  Gin had a habit of babying Evan, maybe a little too much, really.  Of course he couldn't blame her.  After all, Evan was her baby—or so she relished in telling Cain regularly.  Jillian was younger, and yes, Gin doted on her, too, but Evan?  'Pfft . . . And she thinks I hogged Bas . . .'


“Don't go anywhere, Bas.  I'll need you to sample this next cake,” Cain said as he stalked through the living room on his way to the kitchen.

Bas paused the video game he'd been playing with the three other boys, and all of them shot Cain what could only be described as horrified looks.  “You're still trying?”

Stopping abruptly to swing around and pin his son with a rather bored stare, Cain slowly blinked a few times before answering. “Of course I am,” he stated flatly.

Bas grimaced. “I've got one word of advice for you, Dad.”

“What's that?”

“Pillsbury,” the boy replied.

“Very funny,” Cain growled.

“Or two words,” Bas went on, obviously inspired.  “Betty Crocker.”

“Or a better word,” Morio chimed in, “bakery.”

“Shut the hell up, Bas,” Cain grumbled as he resumed his path toward the kitchen.  “Just don't go anywhere.”

And yet, it wasn't entirely surprising a few minutes later when he heard the mad scramble of pre-teen feet on the floor as they quickly hightailed it toward the front door of the mansion.   Cain sighed and shook his head as he grabbed the glass mixing bowl out of the cupboard beside the stove.

“Da-a-a-addy, whatcha doing?” Evan asked as he trotted into the kitchen.

“I'm making a cake, Evan,” he replied, his attention more on the ingredients he was gathering than it was on the child.

“I can make cakes!” he hollered, clapping his little hands happily.  “I get my stool!”

“Okay,” Cain agreed, only paying half-attention as he dug two cake pans out of the cupboard.

Evan scampered over to the two little footstools that Gin kept in a shallow nook nearby to grab the one that had his name painted on it in bright blue.  “Cakes, cakes, cakes!” Evan sang as he dragged it over.

“Ouch,” Cain said, yanking his left leg back when the boy inadvertently smacked the stool into his shin.

“I sowwy, Daddy; I sowwy!” Evan exclaimed, dropping the stool and wringing his hands nervously.

“It's okay,” Cain assured him, scooping him up and kissing his temple before settling the child against his hip while he continued to read the recipe.  “You're getting big, though, and you need to start watching what you're doing, right?”

Evan shoved his head deeper under Cain's chin.  “Right,” he agreed, his voice wavering and, Cain suspected, a little too close to tears.  Sometimes the boy was entirely too much like his mama.

He grinned and stopped long enough to pat Evan's back.  Of course, that wasn't an entirely bad thing, either, he supposed.  “All right, time to make the spice cake,” Cain finally said, giving Evan a little squeeze before setting him on the stool beside him.  “It's your mama's favorite.”

“Spice,” Evan repeated in his usual, ebullient manner despite the heightened brightness in his clear blue eyes.  “Cimamom, pepper, garlic . . .”

Cain winced.  “Yeah, I don't think that Mama would really like garlic in the cake,” he pointed out.

“Nuts!” Evan suddenly hollered, clapping his little hands again as he hopped up and down on the stool.

Cain put a hand on Evan's shoulder to stop the bouncing before the child took a header off the platform and landed on his head.  “What's the matter?”

“Mommy likes nuts!” Evan insisted.

“Yeah, she likes Daddy’s nuts, but we're not talking about that, Evan,” Cain muttered, mostly to himself as he turned his attention back to the recipe again.

“Yeah!” Evan giggled.  “Put Daddy’s nuts in the cake!”

Blinking, Cain shot his son a quick look.  “Uh . . . I think Daddy’s nuts are better off where they are.”

Evan’s little face screwed up in concentration.  “Where are Daddy’s nuts?”

Clearing his throat, Cain shook his head quickly.  “Never mind that, Evan.  You think I should add nuts?”

Evan clapped his hands, his wide grin back in place once more.  “Yeah!  Lots of nuts!”

Cain opened his mouth to gainsay the child but stopped as a thoughtful scowl surfaced on his features.  “Lots of nuts, huh . . .?  All right,” he finally agreed with a shrug.  “After all, how bad could that be?”

“And honey!” Evan hollered, gripping the edge of the counter and hopping up and down while Cain rifled through the cupboards for some pecans or something.  All he could find was half a large bag of walnut halves hidden away in the freezer, of all places.

Evan pulled himself onto the counter, tapping his feet against the cool marble, singing to himself as he watched Cain dump the butter, sugar, and a pint of heavy cream into the bowl.

“Zat, Daddy?” Evan asked, leaning in close as Cain turned on the hand-mixer.

“It's the cream, butter, and sugar,” Cain replied.  “Don't get your hair in there.”

Evan jerked his head up slightly.  “What's the cream?” he asked, his little face screwed up in a frown of concentration.

“The recipe says ‘cream, butter and sugar’,” Cain muttered, eyeing the gloppy mass in the bowl critically.  So far, it wasn't looking any better than his first attempt a few days ago, and it didn't make sense.  The butter wasn't doing much, and the mixer sounded like it was about to suffer a nervous breakdown . . .

“Here we come a-waffling among the leaves so green  . . . Daddy?”

Cain turned off the mixer and grabbed a spatula to scrape the sides of the bowl.  “Hmm?”

“Why we eating waffles in the green?” Evan asked.

Cain blinked and glanced at his son then smiled just a little when what Evan had just sung registered in his brain.  “Waffling, huh?”

Evan giggled and clapped his chubby hands together.  “I like waffles!  Can you make waffles, Daddy?”

“Uh . . .” Then he shrugged, stepping over to the freezer and digging a couple frozen waffles out of the box.  Gin always spent her Sunday afternoons, baking up things to kept them on hand, since Bas tended to have a bottomless pit where his stomach should be.  Cain popped them into the toaster oven and set the timer.  “There,” he said with a grin at his young son, “you can have one in a few minutes.”

Evan started singing again.  “Here we come a-waffling among the leaves so green . . . Here we come a-wand'rin' the fair to be seen . . . Daddy!  We're gonna have waffles at the Christmas Fair?”

Cain laughed outright at that.  Gin must've told the boy about Bevelle's annual Christmas Fair, complete with the hayrides, the silly kid games, the official opening of the open air skating rink in the center of town that was made over half of the parking lot at the civic building every year.  It would start tonight and last for the rest of the time leading up to Christmas with different events every night and culminating in the crowning of Miss Snowy Bevelle, but as far as Cain knew, there never had been waffles there, no . . .

“We'll see,” he replied with a good-natured shake of the head.  The timer went off, and Cain grabbed the toasted treats carefully, dumping a decent amount of maple syrup over them before cutting them up and handing Evan the fork.

Then he turned his attention back to the gloppy mess in the mixing bowl with a sigh.  Maybe it wouldn't be so bad if he could get rid of the lumps of what he suspected to be butter because it just didn't look like any of Gin's cake batters he'd ever seen . . .

“Maybe that's why they call it 'batter',” he muttered to himself.  “You've got to beat the hell out of it first . . .”

It was a little weird, though, wasn't it?  The stupid recipe gave measurements for everything but the cream.  Cain just figured that it was something that must have been standard, so he wasn't going to let it bother him too much.

“Mommy likes maple syrup,” Evan pointed out around a mouthful of waffle.  “We can put syrup in the cake, too!”

Casting the boy a quick glance, Cain gave a mental shrug.  It couldn't really turn out worse than the last attempt, now could it?  Besides that, adding just a little syrup wasn't going to do anything really horrible to it, right?  “Okay,” he agreed, uncorking the earthenware jug and dumping a good glug into the lumpy batter.

“More!” Evan goaded happily.

Cain poured a little more.

“Is there more words?” the boy asked as he pushed the empty plate away and thumped his feet on the counter.

“More words?” Cain echoed, raising his voice to be heard over the racket of the hand-mixer.

“To the waffling song!”

Cain laughed.  “Oh, uh . . . yeah . . .”

“Can you sing it, Daddy?”

Cain considered that while he shut off the mixer and retrieved the necessary spices off the rack.  “Words, huh?  Let me think . . . Oh, yeah . . . 'Here we come a-waffling among the leaves so green, looking for the perfect tree to tap for sap within . . . to make syrup just for you and for your waffles, too . . . May God bless you and send you more waffles for New Year's, may God send you waffles for New Year's . . .'”

Evan exploded in a healthy round of giggles at his father's song.  “It's for waffles!” he crowed between bouts of laughter.

Cain caught him before he could topple off the counter.  “What do you think, Evan?  Look good to you?” he asked, tipping the bowl so that the boy could see into it better.

Evan's laughter slowly died down, and he leaned forward, hands on the counter, to peer into it.  “Whazzat?”

“It's the cake batter,” Cain told him.

Evan frowned in concentration.  “Nuh-uh!”

“Yuh-huh!” Cain argued.  “I even followed the recipe . . . sort of.”

Evan giggled again.  “No, that don't look like cake!”

Cain snorted.  “Pfft!  Like you'd know.  You're not even two yet.”

Which only made Evan laugh harder, of course.  “Dat looks like oatmeal!”

Snapping his mouth closed, Cain glared down at the contents of the mixing bowl once more.  Okay, so Evan had a point.  The little globs of butter kind of did give it the consistency of oatmeal, and with the spices and syrup added, it had a rather grayish sheen to it . . . “Maybe it'll taste better than it looks,” he muttered as he tipped the bowl to empty it into the cake pans.

Dumping in half the bag of walnuts, Cain frowned and tipped his hand to empty the contents completely.  'Or maybe not . . .'

“Jingle bells, Bubby smells, Jilli let a fart . . . Mommy laughed, Gramma gaffed, Grampa ripped the house apar —”

“Evan,” Cain interrupted before his young son could finish his other new song, “who taught you that?”

Evan blinked and stared at Cain for a moment then broke into a wide grin.  “Mowio.”

“Morio,” he repeated with a shake of his head.  He sighed.  Somehow, that just figured . . .


“Aw, man . . . my stomach hurts.”

Bas rolled his eyes and shot Morio a curt look as the four boys made their way along the thoroughfare.  “Serves you right for teaching Evan that stupid song of yours,” he retorted evenly.

Morio grinned then grimaced.  “I didn't know he was going to sing it to your dad,” he pointed out, clutching his stomach, and for a moment—only a moment—Bas almost felt sorry for him.  “Damn, I don't know what the hell he put in that cake-thing, but I don't think there was any cake in it.”

“Better you than us,” Gunnar muttered.

Which was true enough.  They'd almost managed to get out the door after spending the entire afternoon outside in an effort to elude the cake-tasting.  Unfortunately, Morio had tripped against the table just inside the door, thereby alerting Cain to both their presence as well as their attempted departure again, and he'd caught them and ordered them into the kitchen.  Evan, though, was sitting on the counter, happily singing his newest Christmas carol—Morio's weird version of Jingle Bells—and Cain had figured that if Morio had time to make up stupid lyrics, then he had enough time to sample the latest Christmas cake, too.

It was gray, that cake.  Bas had never seen anything like it in his life, and didn't particularly want to know how his father had achieved that shade, either.

“I think it's food poisoning,” Morio groaned, gripping his stomach once more.

“Then go sit in the truck and rest,” Gunnar suggested.

“What if I throw up?”

“Then you'll probably have to hoof it home,” Bas grumbled under his breath.

“Hi, Sebastian.”

Bas blinked and turned, only to come face to face with one of the girls from his class, Brittany Englesworth, and her gaggle of friends.  Cute enough, with her dark brown eyes and curly brown hair, but one of her friends—Kaci—was the one who brought the slight reddish flush to his cheeks, instead.  “Uh, hi,” he replied, wondering if he sounded as stupid as he thought he did.

Her smile widened.  “Who're your friends?”

“Oh, uh, these are my cousins, Gunnar and Morio, and that's my, uh, uncle, Mikio.”

“Pleased to meet you,” Morio said with a broad grin that belied the stomach ache he'd just professed to suffering.

Gunnar inclined his head but said nothing.

“H-h-hajimemashite douzo yoroshiku,” Mikio muttered with a slight bow, left ear twitching wildly, not that the girls could see it under the black bandana he'd tied over his head before they'd left the mansion.

The girls giggled at Mikio's very Japanese show of manners.  “What's that mean?” Marissa, one of the other girls, asked.

“It's a Japanese greeting,” Bas replied.  Mikio's cheeks reddened a little more.  He knew English well enough, sure, but he tended to get a little flustered, especially when directly approached by girls, so he'd likely forgotten to greet them in English.  It seemed to work well enough for him, though, if the expressions on the girls' faces meant anything at all.  Judging from the looks of them, they all seemed to think that Mikio was just adorable, including Kaci . . .

“Bas, you didn't tell me that American girls were so cute,” Morio remarked with a wolfish grin and without taking his eyes off the girls who started giggling and whispering to each other at the compliment.

“You never asked,” Bas muttered under his breath as he prayed that his cheeks weren't as red as he suspected that they might be.

“Aw, don't listen to him,” Morio went on with a conspiratorial wink.  “So which one of you is Bas' girlfriend?” he asked, raising his hand with the pinky finger up.

Mikio reached over and knocked Morio's hand down.  “Baka,” he grumbled, cheeks reddening on Bas' behalf, no doubt.

“Don't be stupid,” Bas hissed in Morio's ear, hoping that the girls hadn't heard him.  Their escalating giggles told him otherwise.

“Your hair . . . it's, like, white,” another of the girls—Traci Coltrane—remarked in a rather bemused sort of way.  “Did you bleach it?”

“One hundred percent natural,” Morio assured them, ignoring Bas' warning.  “Wanna touch it?”

On his other side, Bas heard Gunnar sigh.  “Bakayarou,” he mumbled under his breath.

To Bas' amazement, Morio's antics were actually working.  Even Kaci stepped forward to touch Morio's hair, though Mikio took a step back in retreat before any of the girls could get any weird ideas about him.

“Hey, Bas,” Jimmy Preston said as he swaggered over with a couple of sodas and handed one to his girlfriend, Marissa.  “Friends of yours?” he asked with a rather condescending nod toward the others.

Bas snorted and reminded himself that he was easily twice as big as Jimmy.  “Yeah,” Bas answered curtly, hoping that the guys—mostly Gunnar—didn't decide to take exception to Jimmy's tone.

“They're from Japan,” Marissa said with a giggle and a slight blush as she peeked over at Mikio once more.

Jimmy didn't miss the look, and Bas didn't miss the slight tightening  around Jimmy's mouth or the slight flare of irritation in his expression.  “Ahh . . . so soddy,” he said with a mocking bow as he glowered at Mikio.

“N-no problem,” Mikio replied without looking away from Jimmy.

Bas grimaced inwardly.  There was no way that the guys could possibly have missed that.  “Come on,” he said, turning to leave and tapping Morio on the sleeve.  The action must've made Jimmy think that he'd won whatever imaginary battle he had going on in his head, because he laughed.

“Don't be such a jerk,” Marissa growled, shaking off Jimmy's possessive arm.

“Aw, I was just having some fun,” Jimmy insisted.  “They knew it!”

“Right,” she shot back sarcastically.  “Why don't you go away?”

“Don't be such a crab,” Jimmy argued.  “Geez!  You're my girl, and—”

“And if a girl tells you to go away, then I suggest you do as she asks,” Gunnar remarked reasonably, a little too reasonably.  Bas stifled a groan.  Morio grinned.

“Who asked you, pretty boy?” Jimmy demanded, taking a moment to size Gunnar up and apparently coming to the misplaced conclusion that he could take him.

There was no change in Gunnar's expression, however, and, if anything, he might have even looked a little bored.  “I don't need to be asked about a question of common courtesy,” he replied.  “You, on the other hand, apparently do.  So, when someone tells you that you're being obnoxious, your options are to apologize or to excuse yourself .  Care to hear which one I suggest you choose?”

There was going to be a fight, one way or another.  Bas could feel it coming.  Unfortunately, he wasn't sure exactly how to avoid it, either.  It wasn’t that he was particularly scared of Jimmy.  Quite the contrary, really.  But the fact remained that Jimmy was also human, and if one thing had been drilled into his head over the years, it was that youkai and hanyou simply didn’t fight humans.  Jimmy stepped forward, hands balled into fists at his sides, his cheeks blotchy and red due to the embarrassment of having been so thoroughly called on the carpet.  Gunnar, however, wasn't one to back down, either, and while he wasn't one to go around picking fights, he was by no means a pansy, so if push did come to shove, Bas didn't doubt for a moment that Gunnar would do a little pushing back of his own.

“Will you stop it?” Marissa blasted as she stepped forward and planted herself between Jimmy and Gunnar.  “I swear, Jimmy, if you start a fight over something so stupid, I'll never, ever talk to you again, and I mean it!”

To Bas' surprise, Jimmy actually took a step back in retreat in the face of his girl's anger.  Marissa wasn't appeased, though, and a moment later, she spun around on her heel and stalked away.

Jimmy watched her for a long moment, an almost comical expression of disbelief contorting his features.  “Tch!” he grunted then took off after her, sparing just a moment to toss a fulminating glower over his shoulder at the boys before he sped up to catch her.

“Sorry about him,” Kaci murmured after a moment of silence following their hasty departure.  “Jimmy's always like that, but . . . but he really does like Marissa a lot.”

“It's fine,” Bas muttered, relieved that the fight he'd worried about wasn't actually going to happen, after all.

She smiled at him, and Bas tried to smile back.

“Hey, Bas!  Thought you were gonna meet us over by the rink,” Bas' best friend, Tom, grumbled as he strode over with another of their friends, Dave.

“Sorry about that,” Bas replied.  “Got sidetracked.”

“Oh?  Are you guys going skating, too?” Kaci asked.

“When they ever get around to opening the rink,” Dave remarked.

“That's what we were going to do, too,” she admitted with another smile, and for a moment, Bas had to wonder if she was actually smiling at just him.  “You guys mind if we tag along?”

“Oof,” Bas grunted before he could answer when a small but sturdy body barreled against his legs.

“Bubby!  I find you!”

Bas blinked and looked down, only to find Evan clinging to him, his little face upturned with a bright smile.  “Yeah, you did, runt,” he replied with a grin as he tweaked the bright yellow ball of yarn securely sewed to the top of his stocking cap.

“Oh, my God!  Is that your brother, Sebastian?” Brittany asked with a squeal.  “He's so cute!”

“Uh,” Bas said with a shy little smile.  “Y-yeah, he is.”

Brittany knelt down on the balls of her feet.  “What's your name?” she asked.

Evan looked at her then up at Bas to make sure that she was all right.  He must've figured that she was, because he smiled a little bashfully.  “Evan,” he answered without letting go of Bas' legs.

“You're just a cutie pie, Evan,” she told him.

Evan giggled and hid his face against Bas' kneecap for a second.

“Evan, where's Mom and Dad?” Bas asked suddenly, frowning as he glanced around, scanning the crowd for his parents and unable to locate them right off.  Sure, he could feel them nearby, but . . .

“I want to find Bubby,” Evan replied.

“Good thing your father's tall,” Gunnar remarked.  Bas glanced at him, and Gunnar jerked his head toward the left.  Sure enough, there was Cain, hurrying through the crowd though he didn't seem overly concerned, and Bas figured that his mother was right there with him, even if he couldn't quite see her yet.

“Evan!  Sweetie!  You're not supposed to run away from your father and me like that!” Gin chided as she darted away from Cain and hurried over to Bas' side.

“I find Bubby,” Evan told her as she scooped him up to kiss his cheek.

“Bassie!” Jillian exclaimed as Cain drew up beside them.  She twisted herself in her father's arms and held out her arms toward her brother.  Bas took her and settled her on his hip without a second thought.  “Evan ran away!”

“He didn't run too far, Jilli,” Bas replied with a smile.

She giggled and settled her cheek against his shoulder.

“Aww, but you've got to come with us, remember?  Sebastian's going to go ice skating,” Gin reminded Evan.

Evan's smile faltered as he shot Bas a hopeful look.

“He can come skate with us,” Morio piped up suddenly and held out his arms toward the boy.  “Right, Evan?”

“He can?” Bas blurted before he could stop to think about it.  After all, it wasn't that the idea of toting Evan along bothered him as much as he figured it would have bothered his cousins and Mikio.  Well, not Mikio.  He wouldn't have cared, either, Bas figured.

“Girls love little pups,” Morio muttered, leaning in closer so that Bas could hear him.

Gin shot Bas a dubious glance.  “Oh, come on, Evan.  Leave the boys alone, okay?  We'll go get some peppermint candy!”

“Eh, let him hang out with the guys,” Morio insisted.

“Yeah!” Evan chimed in, “I wanna be a guy!”

Gin bit her lip and shot Bas another glance.  “Is it okay with you, Sebastian?”

Bas shrugged.  “Sure.  He's all right.”

“Me, too!” Jillian added, leaning away from Bas to give him her best smile.

He grinned.  “But you're not a guy,” he told her.

“Jilli tan be a guy,” she insisted.  “Pwease?”

“Okay,” Bas drawled.  “But you can't wear that bow in your hair.  Guys don't wear pink bows.”

No sooner had he said that than she yanked the bow loose and handed it to her mother.  “Jilli’s a guy!” she exclaimed happily.

Cain chuckled as Gin giggled and dug into her purse.  “Here, Sebastian.  In case you want to get some hot chocolate or something.”

Staring at the three twenty dollar bills that his mother had given him, Bas shook his head.  “We don't need that much,” he said.

“Don't be silly!” Gin insisted.  “What about all your friends here?”

“Come on, baby girl,” Cain said with a grin.  “Don't forget, Bas.  Meet us at the tree at nine, okay?”

Bas nodded as his father took his mother's hand and started to drag her away.  Gin waved over her shoulder as he tugged her back into the crowd once more.

“Du-u-u-ude,” Tom breathed.

Bas glanced at him with a frown.  Tom looked like he'd just been knocked clean off his feet.  “What?”

“That was your mom?”

“. . . Yeah,” he replied slowly.  “Why?”

Tom slowly shook his head.  “She's hot!”

“Yeah, she is,” Dave added.

Bas snorted, deciding that particular comment didn't really deserve a response.  When he looked over at the girls, however, he blinked.  Every last one of them, Kaci included, was staring off in the direction that his parents had disappeared with the stupidest expressions on their faces.

“Oh, my God, he looked like a movie star or something!” Brittany murmured.

“W-wow,” Kaci breathed.

“Big wow,” Traci amended.

“Huge  wow,” Shelly added.

Bas snorted in complete disgust.  So did Morio and Gunnar.  Mikio sighed.


'If you found a bakery that would play along, I'll bet Gin would never notice if you bought a cake instead . . .'

Heaving an inward sigh as he headed toward the kitchen, Cain ignored that bit of unnecessary advice.  Besides, the latest trial run hadn't turned out too bad.  In fact, it had looked pretty good when he'd taken it out of the oven awhile ago just after Ben had arrived to discuss some tai-youkai crap.  In an effort to speed up the baking process, he'd turned the oven up, figuring that it'd be fine to bake it at a higher temperature and just take it out of the oven sooner.  Now he was just going to taste it to see if it was all right.

Stopping short when he rounded the corner, only to find Bas and Evan hunkered down on the floor, Cain crossed his arms over his chest and raised an eyebrow.  “What are you doing?”

Bas glanced up at him but didn't answer right away.  Evan, on the other hand, grinned at him and let out a round of giggles. “Bungles won't eat it, Daddy!” he announced happily.

Only then did Cain realize that the boys had cut a piece out of his cake, and it was in one of the dogs' dishes on the floor.  Bungles, the dog in question, was halfway across the room, cowering n the floor and whining softly, as though she was scared of something—probably the cake.

Cain snorted.  “Pfft!  Don't feed my cake to the dogs,” he grumbled, wondering vaguely if Bas hadn't had a talk with the animal to gain her cooperation in this little farce.

“Better the dogs than us,” Bas muttered, getting to his feet.  “C'mon, Evan.  Let's get out of here before Dad tries to poison us.”

“Poison makes you die!” Evan laughed.  “Daddy gonna make us die?”

“He's trying,” Bas replied, picking Evan up to expedite their hasty retreat.

“Get back here, Bas,” Cain called after him.  “We'll see whether or not it kills you.”

Bas mumbled something unintelligible as he hurried out of the room.

Cain scowled at his retreating children as Evan waved over Bas' shoulder before turning back to stare at the dog bowl once more.  “It's not that bad,” he grumbled at Bungles.

Bungles whimpered in response and did a belly-crawl out of the room, too.

“Traitor,” Cain growled.

“Daddy, Jilli's hungry,” Jillian said as she skipped into the kitchen, her little piggy tails bouncing to and fro with every step.

“Oh?  You want a piece of cake?” he asked.

Jillian giggled and held up her arms to help her father in lifting her off the floor.  “Jilli likes cake!”

“Good,” Cain said, planting a loud kiss on her downy soft cheek and settling her on the counter.  “You want to try Daddy's . . .? Oh . . . well, that doesn't look good,” he mused as he stared at his once-nice looking cake.  The top that had been nicely rounded before was sunken in the middle.  Maybe there had been a tremor or something shortly after he'd gotten it out of the oven.  Did they have those in Maine . . .?

He sighed and frowned at the cake.  Bas had apparently dug some out of the middle for the dog, and underneath the top crusty part, the inner part had sort of seeped together.  All in all it looked pretty . . . “Gross,” he muttered, shaking his head with a sigh.  “Back to square one.”

Letting out another deep sigh, Cain turned around to gather more ingredients to start over again.

The sound of Jillian's crying, however, stopped Cain in his tracks.  True to form, it wasn't a loud sob; it never was.  It was more of a little squeak and the scent of tears.  “Hey, what's wrong?” he asked as he picked her up to cuddle her.

She sniffled and buried her face against his shoulder.  “Cake bad!” she whimpered between little sobs.

“Aww, Jilli, Daddy's sorry,” Cain said, patting her back and leaning to the side to grab one of Gin's pristine white dishcloths off the counter to wipe off Jillian's hand.  Bad, okay, but so bad that it would make his daughter cry?  He sighed yet again.  “Stop crying, and I'll throw it out; I promise.”

“It hurts Jilli's tongue,” she whined, sticking out said-tongue when Cain set her on the counter again and carefully wiped off her hands.

Cain grimaced and hurried over to grab a small slice out of the peppermint cake that Gin had made for him earlier.  Normally speaking, he didn't share his cake, not even with his children.  That he was giving a piece to Jillian spoke volumes about how bad he truly felt.   Slipping the piece onto a plate and grabbing a bright pink plastic fork, he set it beside her and rather clumsily wiped the tears off her little cheeks.  “Here you go, Jilli-bean.  Don't cry, okay?  And don't tell Evan or Bas that I gave you that, either.”

She smiled brightly at him—a disturbing contrast to the tears that still stood in her brilliant blue eyes.  For just a second, Cain couldn't help but remember the infant he'd held in his arms seventeen months ago—less than two years—as the warmth of the fabricated wind, both comforting and frightening at the same time—enveloped them both, as the woman who had struggled to give her life and ultimately to bring her to Cain for safekeeping, had smiled wearily and then disappeared, leaving him this precious gift, her daughter—a little girl that Cain now called his own.  He’d never known the woman’s name.  She’d carried nothing on her person, no identification at all.  But she’d brought Jillian to him just after her birth because she wanted to know that she would always be protected.

Of course, back then, Cain had been reluctant to ask Gin if they should keep her, and he’d actually started to look into potential parents for the infant girl.  Evan was only a few months old at the time, though, and Cain hadn’t thought that Gin would be willing to take on two infants at the same time.

He really shouldn’t underestimate that particular woman, however.  It was a lesson he’d thought he had learned years ago . . .

Jillian, oblivious to her father’s sudden trip down memory lane, dug into the cake with gusto, and aside from an errant hiccup here and there, the trauma caused by sampling Cain's last cake effort seemed to have been forgotten.  Cain stood back and watched her for a moment before resuming his task of gathering ingredients—again.

It didn't make sense, did it?  After all, he'd followed the recipe each time, and for some reason, the cakes just never actually turned out well.  If he didn't know better, he'd swear that it was some kind of bizarre conspiracy or something . . .

And it still bothered him, didn’t it?  The directions said “cream butter and sugar”, but it didn’t give a measurement for the cream.  He felt like he was missing something.  Maybe one of Gin’s many cookbooks had something on it.  Maybe there was some universal measurement that he didn’t know about.

He’d just retrieved Gin’s red and white checked Better Homes and Gardens book off the shelf when Kagome strolled into the kitchen.  “Cain, have you seen InuYasha lately?” she asked without preamble.

Cain looked up from the cookbook and slowly shook his head.  “Uh, no . . . I just got out of a meeting with Ben a while ago.  Before that, I thought he was outside, sparring with Ryomaru.”

“Hm, okay.  Thanks,” she said with an easy smile—a smile that she’d passed on to her daughter.  The smile faltered, however, when she glanced down at the failed cake, only to do a classic double-take as she gingerly poked at the top with her index finger.  “Oh, that doesn’t look . . . I mean, it’s a little undercooked, isn’t it?”

Cain snorted.  “That was one of my better attempts,” he muttered, cheeks pinking slightly.

Kagome cleared her throat and slowly nodded.  “I . . . see . . .”

Making a face, Cain closed the book and shoved it aside before reaching for the butter and dropping the sticks in the bowl.  The sugar followed, and he was about to dump a pint container of cream in when Kagome’s voice stopped him.

“Your recipe calls for cream?” she asked.

Cain blinked and glanced at her.  “Yeah, but it doesn’t actually say how much.”

She looked a little confused.  “What do you mean?”

With a shrug, Cain nodded at the recipe card sitting on the counter.  “It says ‘cream, butter, and sugar’,” he replied.

Kagome stared at him for a long moment, her eyelashes fluttering slightly as she gazed at him, then down at the card and back again.  “Uh . . . O-o-o-oh . . . I see . . . Cain?”

“Yes?”

She cleared her throat.  “When a recipe says to cream the butter and sugar, what it means is that you’re supposed to beat the butter and sugar together until it’s light and fluffy.”

Setting the container of cream down, Cain frowned at Kagome.  “Then why doesn’t it just say to beat it?” he asked.

“Well, beating and creaming are two different things,” she mused with a gentle smile.

Letting out a deep breath, Cain nodded slowly.  “Thanks,” he said.

“Do you need help with anything else?” she asked, careful to keep her tone as neutral as she could.

“No, I think the rest of the recipe is pretty straightforward.”

She didn’t look entirely convinced, but she didn’t seem willing to press the issue, either, which was fine with Cain.  He felt rather stupid, never mind that logic told him that he really wasn’t.  It was an easy thing to have assumed since he’d never actually had to bake anything before.

“Look, Grandma!  Jilli gots cake!” Jillian announced proudly.  She was still working on the small piece that Cain had given her.

Kagome laughed and kissed Jillian’s head.  “Oh, that looks yummy,” she agreed.  “Do you want to come in the living room with me?”

Jillian shook her head.  “Jilli can help Daddy,” she decided.

“Okay,” Kagome relented with a smile.  “Cain, if you have any questions, don’t hesitate to ask.”

He nodded as she left the room.  “Thanks,” he called after her.  “So what do you think, Jilli-bean?  You think that it’ll work out this time?”

Jillian nodded even though she likely had no idea what he was talking about.

Still, he couldn’t help but feel a little better.  Hopefully the cake would turn out better this time since he had that straightened out . . .

He took his time mixing the ingredients, and he had to admit that the batter looked a bit better than it had in the last few attempts.  It looked more like batter and less like glop, though he’d be lying if he said that he wasn’t a little worried about the whole thing.  He’d suffered way too many failures already not to.

Setting the mixer aside, he reached for a spatula to give the batter one last turn to make sure that he was satisfied with the result, only to blink when three raspberries flew over the side of the bowl and landed with a dull ‘plop’.

Jillian giggled.  “Raspberries!” she said.

“Oh, you think I should add some raspberries, I take it?” he asked with a little smile.

Jillian nodded.  “Jilli loves raspberries!”

“But this is a spice cake, not a berry cake,” he told her as he gave the batter a quick stir to coat the berries.

“More berries!” Jillian insisted, grabbing the white ceramic bowl on the counter that Gin kept the fruit in.

“I don’t know,” he drawled thoughtfully as Jillian tossed in a few more berries.

“Blueberries!” she suddenly exclaimed.

“There are no blueberries in that bowl,” he pointed out.

Jillian giggled.  “Mommy has blueberries in the freezer,” she replied, “for the muffins!”

It was on the tip of his tongue to tell her that he didn’t think adding blueberries was a good idea.  Then again, they’d already added raspberries, hadn’t they?  What could a few blueberries hurt?

“Are you going to try this cake?” Cain asked, shaking out what amounted to a couple handfuls of blueberries.

Jillian carefully jabbed at the mixture with the spatula she’d confiscated while Cain was looking for blueberries.  “Yeah,” she said, concentrating on her self-directed task.

Cain chuckled and stashed the rest of the blueberries back in the freezer once more.  All in all, he felt rather good about this attempt.  Even if it didn’t turn out perfectly because of the added berries, it couldn’t possibly be worse than the others, now could it?


“Be quiet or you’ll wake him up!”

“You’re the one being loud.”

“You’re both going to wake him up, and even if you don’t, you’re not going to get an accurate measurement.”

“Don’t be so negative, Mamo-chan.  Have a little optimism, will you?”

“Just hurry up.”

It was too late.  With a grunt and sharply indrawn breath, Bas rolled over and sat up, blinking groggily as he frowned at Morio—or rather, at the tape measure in Morio’s hand.  “What are you doing?” he asked, the remnants of sleep still hanging onto him.

Morio broke into a goofy grin.  “Your dad,” he ad-libbed quickly.  “He wanted us to measure you to make sure that you’re not outgrowing your bed.”

Bas blinked again, his expression rather blank.  “What?” he finally demanded.

“Yeah!  See, he was worried that you were outgrowing it so he sent us up here to make sure that you’re not,” Morio went on.

Gunnar rolled his eyes.   Mikio heaved a sigh as he idly fingered his twitching left ear.

It had to be the lingering sleepiness that slowed Bas’ brain down enough that he actually looked like he was considering what Morio had claimed for about thirty seconds before scowling at his idiot cousin.  “What kind of crap is that?” he demanded.  “What are you really doing?”

Morio’s grin widened.  “Well, you know.  The truth is, we were going to measure your penis to see whose is bigger.”

He managed to hop back just quickly enough to barely avoid Bas’ swing.  Laughing like a lunatic, he stumbled when a well-placed hand in the center of his back made him step toward the bed—and right into Bas’ waiting fist.  “Ow-w-w-w,” he half-whined, have chortled.  “Damn, Bas!  Holy dogs!”

“Get the hell out of my room, you little pervert,” Bas growled, flopping over and dragging the blankets over his head.

Mikio flicked a hand toward Bas.  Morio’s grin widened.  Carefully pulling the tape measure out of the plastic casing, he inched forward , figuring that it was now or never.  The trouble was, Bas had also bent his knees, so getting the actual measurement wasn’t going to be as simple as he’d thought, but he had money riding on that bet—and a new video game that he’d been itching to buy . . .

“All right,” Bas thundered, tossing aside the blankets and climbing out of bed faster than should have been possible, “what the hell’s going on?”

Morio laughed and stepped back, letting go of the end of the tape measure.  It retracted fast, the loose end snapping back and rapping him on the knuckles before it wound back into the case.  “Ow,” he hissed despite the idiotic grin on his face.  “It’s nothing!  I swear!  I just . . .”

One of Bas’ eyebrows arched as he crossed his arms over his chest.  “Just what?  Got a new tape measure and decided to measure everyone with it?”

Morio’s grin widened.  “Yeah, that sounds good!”

Bas eyed him for a long moment before snorting indelicately and stomping off toward the bathroom.

“That wasn’t nearly as bad as I figured it’d be,” Mikio ventured when the sound of the slamming door faded away.

“Told you it would never work,” Gunnar pointed out, pushing himself away from the wall where he’d been slouching.  “Baka.”

“Aww, I had to try,” Morio grumbled.  “Help me think of another way.”

Heading for the doorway, Gunnar shook his head.  “After breakfast,” he called back.  “I’m starving.”

“Mikio?”

“I’m hungry, too,” he said as he followed Gunnar out of the room.

Morio sighed, staring at the tape measure in his hand.  There had to be a way, right?  He was smart, wasn’t he?  He’d figure it out . . .

His thoughts were interrupted, however, but the very loud growling in the pit of his stomach that reminded him that he, too, was pretty hungry.

He caught up with Gunnar and Mikio in the living room.

“Ah, just the boys I was hoping to see,” Cain greeted them as they stepped into the brightly lit kitchen.

“Uh . . . Onii-san,” Mikio muttered, cheeks pinking as his discomfort spiked.

Cain grinned in his usual, friendly manner.  For some reason, however, it felt entirely ominous this morning . . . “Sit down; sit down.  Where’s Bas?”

“Taking a shower or something,” Morio said, shooting Gunnar a worried glance as the latter slid wordlessly into the breakfast nook.

“This wasn’t exactly what I had in mind when I said breakfast,” Mikio remarked as he frowned at the plate before him—and the hunk of cake that Cain had slapped onto a plate for him.

“Yeah,” Morio agreed, eyeing the ‘treat’ dubiously.  “I was thinking more along the lines of eggs and bacon or . . . or actual food . . .”

“I promise this one won’t be as bad as that one was,” Cain grumbled, cheeks pinking at the reminder that his first effort had been, well, horrible.

“Morning, Dad.  I—” Cutting himself off, Bas stopped short and started to backpedal when he saw the expressions on the other boys’ faces.

“Morning, Bas,” Cain greeted with a smile.  “Pull up a bench and try this for me.”

Bas looked cornered.  “Didn’t you make Jillian cry yesterday with your last one?” he asked rather dubiously.

Cain snorted and narrowed his eyes on his son.  “That one doesn’t count,” he grumbled.  “Besides, I figured out what was wrong with it, and this one looks good.”

Bas still didn’t look like he believed Cain entirely, but, seeing no way out of it, he heaved a sigh and shuffled over to the breakfast nook.  “Isn’t this like child abuse?”

“Shut up and try it,” Cain growled, thumping a plate onto the table in front of his son.

“I don’t know,” Mikio mumbled, staring at the piece in front of him.  “It still doesn’t look . . . right . . .”

Bas heaved a sigh but seemed surprised that the cake didn’t actually look, well, awful.  He seemed to debate it in his head for a minute, but in the end, he reached for the fork and stuck a piece into his mouth.

Cain jumped back a step when Bas bolted from the table.  Both hands over his mouth, he tore out of the kitchen as though the devil himself was hot on his heels.  Seeing Bas’ response to the cake, however, was more than enough for the other boys.  Before Cain could recover from his own surprise, the three of them made a break for it, leaving their cake on the table, untouched.

“What the fuck is wrong with them?” InuYasha grumbled as he stomped into the kitchen.

“No idea,” Cain replied, only paying attention about halfway.  He knew damn well that there shouldn’t be anything at all wrong with that cake.  He’d followed the instructions to the letter, hadn’t he?  He hadn’t even allowed any extra additions to it since the cake that he’d let Jillian toss berries into had turned out so mushy and all around gross that he hadn’t bothered to try it out on anyone.  But this one?

“Keh!  Why don’t you just give the hell up and make one of those damn paperweights for Gin, like you always do?” InuYasha went on as he scowled at the cake left sitting on the table.

“Because,” Cain said, stifling a sigh, “I made a promise to her.  She wants a cake.  I’m going to make her a cake.”

InuYasha snorted.  “If it don’t kill her,” he muttered.

“As if that’s what I’m trying to do,” Cain shot back.  “Anyway, I thought I had it this time . . .”

The last bit was directed more at himself than to InuYasha.  The latter must have thought that Cain was talking to him, though.  “It don’t . . .” he paused long enough to cross his arms over his chest, looking more irritated by the second.  “I guess it don’t look that awful,” he admitted grudgingly.

“Try it,” Cain said.

To be completely honest, he wasn’t entirely sure what he’d really expected.  In retrospect, he supposed that he’d figured that InuYasha would snort or growl or stomp out of the kitchen while letting everyone in the vicinity hear just how stupid he thought Cain really was.  To his utter shock, however, InuYasha stood there for a moment then made a face but grabbed Mikio’s untouched plate and fork, stabbing off a healthy sized bite and stuffing it into his mouth before he could think better of it.

And he chewed.

And chewed.

And chewed some more.

Whatever he really thought, though, was hard to tell.  The expression on his face remained a cross between irritation and a strange sort of blankness that Cain wasn’t used to seeing.  In fact, the only real change at all was the slight flaring of his nostrils, but that didn’t really tell Cain a thing, either.  After another minute of chewing, InuYasha swallowed once—twice—three times.  “Water,” he croaked before swallowing for the fourth time.

Cain strode over, grabbing a bottle of water out of the refrigerator and tossed it to him, wisely opting to remain silent until his father-in-law had drained the entire bottle and tossed it into the trash.  Jaws clenched so tightly that his cheeks bulged out slightly, InuYasha said nothing as he stomped toward the doorway.

“Well?” Cain finally asked, raising an eyebrow as he watched InuYasha’s hasty retreat.

The hanyou didn’t stop walking.  “Great,” he growled in his usual surly tone.  “Best fucking cake, ever.”

Cain stood there for a long minute, staring at the empty doorway, unable to make sense of InuYasha’s strange behavior.  “What . . . the hell . . . was that . . .?” he finally muttered to himself.  Come to think of it, InuYasha had been acting a little weird since they’d arrived, hadn’t he?  But this . . . This was just plain weird, if you asked Cain.  ‘Really, really weird . . .’

“Where’s the fire?” Ryomaru asked as he wandered into the kitchen.

Cain blinked and shook his head.  “Fire?”

“Hell, yeah.  The boys just took off out the front door like there was a fire or some shit,” Ryomaru explained as he yanked open the refrigerator and started rummaging around.

Cain snorted.  “Tried to get them to try my latest cake, and they acted like they were going to die,” he admitted.  “Don’t know why.  Your father said it was all right.”

Ryomaru stopped short and slowly peered over his shoulder at Cain.  “He did?”

Cain shrugged.  “I know.  Surprised me, too.  Figured he’d at least knock it, just because I made it.”

Ryomaru grunted and turned away from the refrigerator, letting it close on its own as he shuffled over to the counter.  “This it?”

“Yeah,” Cain said, pulling the plates off the table and moving over to the trash can to dump them.

Ryomaru frowned at the cake left in the pan for a moment then gave a little shrug as he dug a finger into the cake and took a bite.

And instantly spit it out again.  “Fuck!” he growled, tossing the bit into the trash before sticking his face under the water tap and sucking down a good gallon before he resurfaced for air.  “Balls, Zelig!  What the fuck did you do that for?”

“Do what?” Cain demanded, rolling his eyes.  Honestly, could it really be that bad?  Scowling at the last piece in his hand that he had yet to dump—Bas’ cake—Cain heaved a sigh and stuck a crumb into his mouth.  It was all he needed.  Instead of the cake taste that should have been there, it tasted like . . .

“What the hell did you do?  Dump an entire container of salt in there?” Ryomaru grumbled as he dried his face on one of Gin’s white towels.

Dumping that piece into the trash, too, Cain sighed.  Gin kept a container of salt on the counter right next to the sugar.  He must have grabbed the wrong one last night when he was mixing up the batter.  No wonder Bas had ended up running out of the kitchen . . .

“That aside,” Ryomaru went on.  “Guess it wasn’t too bad.  Texture was all right and all that.  Just get rid of the fucking salt.”

Heaving a sigh, Cain set the plates in the sink.  “Be easier if your sister had asked for a trip to the moon or something,” he grumbled.

Ryomaru chuckled and clapped Cain on the shoulder.  “Ain’t that bad,” he assured him.  “Give it another few years, and maybe you’ll have something edible.”

Cain watched Ryomaru walk out of the kitchen with a dark scowl on his face, wondering vaguely if Kagome would really miss that particular son, should he come up mysteriously missing.  Easy for him to laugh, wasn’t it?  He wasn’t the one staring down Christmas with no present for his mate . . .


“Mm,” Cain moaned, tightening his arms around Gin and refusing to open his eyes.

Gin sighed softly and snuggled closer.  “Nice, right?” she murmured, her voice muffled by Cain’s chest.

“Why don’t we just stay in bed all day?  Don’t think anyone would actually miss us . . .”

She giggled but made no move to get out of bed.  “Where’s Evan?” she asked since the boy was conspicuously missing.

“Are you kidding?  It’s Saturday morning.  He’s downstairs watching Power Puppies, I’m sure.”

“Oh, right!  I forgot that it’s Saturday!  Let’s see . . . Mama and I were going to make up the candies and stuff today and maybe bet a jump on the cookies . . . You don’t need the kitchen today, do you?” she asked, idly twisting her fingers in his hair.

Cain made a face.  She didn’t see it.  Five days till Christmas, and he’d yet to create an edible cake . . .

‘Bakery, Zelig.’

‘Shut the hell up.’  He sighed.  “No,” he replied.  “You know, I’m sure that your mom can handle that stuff alone . . . We could just hide out up here, and no one would be the wiser.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t feel right if I did that,” she mused.  “Besides, isn’t Ben coming over later?”

Heaving a sigh, Cain glanced at the clock.  He’d almost forgotten about that, and even then, he knew well enough that Ben’s visit wasn’t going to be pleasant.  Since he was coming over to discuss a case that had recently come to their attention and would likely end up in Cain’s having to issue a hunt order, it was a safe bet that the meeting was really the last thing that Cain wanted to deal with.

“Did you invite him over for Christmas dinner?” Gin asked, oblivious to Cain’s rapidly darkening mood.

“Uh, yeah,” he said, kissing her forehead.  “I did.”

“And?” she prompted when he provided no more information.

Cain rolled his eyes.  “He’ll be here, of course.  Did you think otherwise?”

“Hmm, maybe we should try to fix him up.  I met this really nice girl at the school the other day . . . She’s a new receptionist, and she said that she just moved here a few months ago.”

Cain snorted.  “Absolutely not, baby girl.  Don’t you dare try to set up Ben on a blind date.”

“Why not?” she asked, pushing herself up on her elbows so she could look him in the eye.

Cain leveled a knowing look at her.  “I’m sure that Ben’s perfectly capable of messing up his own love life, Gin.  No.”

She made a face, and for a moment, he thought she was going to argue with him.  In the end, though, she must’ve figured that it wouldn’t do any good—or she was trying to figure out how to do it without his knowledge.

“I mean it,” he warned for good measure.

Letting out a deep, dejected breath, Gin pulled away and scooted off the bed.  “You win, Zelig-sensei,” she grumbled, pushing open the closet and grabbing a cute little red and green plaid jumper dress.  “I would have thought that you, more than anyone, would want Ben to have the same kind of happiness that we have, but if you really don’t . . .”

He rolled his eyes but made no move to get out of bed.  “Give up, baby girl.  Ben would never come around here if you started trying to fix him up constantly.”  He considered that for a moment then chuckled.  “Then again, that might be a bonus.  Go ahead.  Knock yourself out.”

“You’re terrible!” she chided in as stern a voice as she could muster.

He chuckled.  “Hey, Gin?”

“Hmm?” she drawled, leaning on the bureau while she checked her reflection in the mirror that hung over it.

He frowned.  “Has your father been acting . . . weird . . . around you?”

That got her full attention.  Turning away from the mirror, she seemed surprised by his question.  “Papa?  No . . .”

“You’re sure?” he pressed.

Scrunching her face up in an exaggerated show of concentration, Gin tapped her chin thoughtfully.  “Now that you mention it, he almost complimented you yesterday.”

He quirked an eyebrow.  “He did?”

“Almost,” she repeated then shrugged offhandedly.  “I mean, he said that maybe you weren’t as stupid as he thought you were.”

Cain snorted.  “I’d hardly call that a compliment,” he scoffed.

“You keep missing the ‘almost’ part of that,” she said with a giggle.  “And from papa?  That’s a pretty big thing, really.”

“Whatever,” he grumbled.  “Anyway, I’m starting to think that he’s either losing what’s left of his mind or your mother somehow managed to browbeat him into being nice.”

Gin rolled her eyes, crossing her arms over her chest.  “You make it sound like being nice is something terrible,” she pouted.

“From your father?  It’s creepy as hell, baby girl, no doubt about it.”

She sighed.  “Even if Mama did ask him to be nice to you, don’t you think that you should do the same?”

“You think I don’t?” he parried.

She didn’t look impressed.  “You like to pick on Papa just as much as Papa likes to pick back.”

“Well, there is that,” he agreed philosophically.

“Maybe you should get up and spend some time with Papa,” she suggested with a sudden burst of inspiration.  “I bet he’d like that!”

“About as much as I would,” Cain muttered under his breath.

“Oh, you could go for a walk or something with Papa before Ben gets here,” she suggested.

Cain pretended not to have heard her idea.  “Ben won’t be here for a while,” he pointed out instead.  “Don’t suppose you’d come back to bed, just for a little bit?”

“I’ll bring up a slice of cake for you,” she offered, ignoring his request.  “Do you want a nice, hot cup of coffee, too?”

“I’d rather have a nice, hot—”

“Behave yourself,” she cut in before he could finish his statement as a very vivid blush exploded just under the surface of her skin.

Cain heaved a longsuffering sigh as she hurried down the steps of the loft.  A few moments later, he heard the door close, and he sat up.

With any luck at all, he could get business finished quickly enough.  After that?

‘After that, you’d better try turning out a cake that doesn’t practically kill everyone who samples it.’

‘Thought I told you to shut up . . .’

‘Face it, Zelig.  You’ve got five days—five days—till Christmas.  If you don’t get that damned cake right . . .’

‘I know; I know,’ he thought with a scowl as he grabbed the first pair of pants he laid hands on in the closet.  ‘Merry fucking Christmas.’

‘That’s right . . . Merry fucking Christmas, indeed . . .’


“Aw, come on, Bas!”

“For the last time, no,” Bas growled as he stomped into the kitchen and plopped down on one of the barstools.

Cain closed the oven door and turned to eye the boys.  “What’s going on?” he asked.  Bas looked like he was ready to throttle his cousins—or at least one of them, anyway.

“You don’t even have to really do it,” Morio pressed.  “Just tell them you’re fifteen centimeters taller than you were last summer!  Easy!”

“And why would I do that?” Bas demanded.

Morio grinned.  “It’s for a good cause,” he insisted.

“Which is?”

The grin widened.  “Cafeteria Battle IV,” Morio said.

Bas rolled his eyes.  “That’s a stupid game,” he grumbled.  “Now for the last time, no.  Go play in traffic, Morio.”

“Bas,” Cain chastised, crossing his arms over his chest, “don’t tell him that.”

“Dad—”

“He’s the only one who might actually go do it,” Cain went on.

Morio laughed outright.  “Heck, there’s not enough traffic around here to bother.  Why don’t you guys move to Japan?  Tokyo’s a lot more fun than this place.”

Bas snorted indelicately and nabbed a cookie off the platter on the counter.  “Because, you idiot, Dad’s the North American tai-youkai, and he couldn’t be the North American tai-youkai if we lived in Japan.”

“Oh, yeah!  I never thought of that!”

Bas snorted.  “Go figure.”

“Aww, c’mon!  You’ve got to let me measure you!” Morio went on, much to Bas’ chagrin.  “O-ne-gai?” he added, drawing the word out as he smacked his hands together and bowed slightly.

“Not-on-your-life,” Bas responded in a fairly good imitation of his cousin.

Morio heaved a sigh, but he wasn’t quite ready to give up.  “Okay, well, you’re about that much taller than Mamo-kun—” he held up his hand, spreading his fingers and thumb apart to show a gap, “—and he’s probably grown about that much since the end of last summer, and back then, you were about this much taller than him, which means if I take Mamo-kun’s height now, minus his height back then plus the difference between your height now and your height then—”

“What the hell is he babbling about?” Gunnar asked baldly as he walked into the kitchen.

Bas snorted again but didn’t answer.  Cain shrugged.  “He lost me around the end of last summer,” he said.

Morio grinned.  “Let me measure you, Mamo-kun.”

Gunnar stuck out his arm, catching Morio by the forehead to hold him off.  “Forget it.”

Bas got up and headed toward the doorway.

“Oi!  Where are you going?”

“Outside,” Bas called back.  “Gunnar, do me a favor and kill him before you come out, will you?”

Gunnar grunted in response, shoving Morio back a step before following after Bas.

Cain watched the boys head outside with a shake of his head.  As much as Bas griped and complained, the boys were close—maybe closer than was healthy.  Then again, it was kind of nice, too.  Even though Bas didn’t live near them and didn’t get to see them as often as the others did, it was obvious that the four of them shared a very special bond, even if they wanted to maim Morio every now and then . . .

“So how tall is he?” Ryomaru asked as he got into the refrigerator for a bottle of apple juice.

Cain blinked and peered over his shoulder at his brother-in-law.  He hadn’t heard him come into the room . . . “Who?  Bas?  Don’t really know.  Why?”

Ryomaru paused in his downing of the juice to grin at Cain.  “I’m in on that bet, too.”

Cain stared at him for a few seconds before slowly shaking his head.  “Why doesn’t that surprise me?” he mumbled before another thought crossed his mind.  “Uh, hey . . . You wouldn’t happen to know why your father’s acting so . . . strange, would you?”

To his surprise, Ryomaru actually laughed.  “Noticed, did you?  Figured you would.”

“Yeah, so why?” Cain asked again.

Ryomaru set the container of juice down on the counter and reached for a cookie.  “Easy.  Mother wanted him to promise to be nice to you for their entire visit as a special Christmas present to her.”

Cain’s mouth dropped open as he gawped at Ryomaru.  InuYasha?  He’d promised that to Kagome . . .?  “Is that right?” he mused thoughtfully.

“She had to browbeat him into it, if that makes you feel better,” Ryomaru offered with a widening grin.

Cain snorted.  “Pfft!  And he thinks I’m stupid for promising to make Gin a cake . . . He’s a piece of work, that one . . .”

“Yeah, but it’s hella fun to watch him trying to control his mouth,” Ryomaru mused.

Cain finally grinned just a little.  “So did you promise Nezumi anything?”

“Keh!  Nez don’t need me to do anything like that,” he scoffed with an airy wave of his hand.  “I’m perfect, just the way I am!”

Snapping his mouth closed, Cain figured it’d be pointless to even try to remark upon that statement.

Ryomaru grabbed the bottle and shot Cain a wolfish grin before swaggering out of the kitchen once more, leaving Cain alone to ponder what he’d just found out.  ‘So . . . He has to be nice to me, does he . . .?  Interesting . . .’ Sucking in one cheek as he thought it over, he nodded slowly.  ‘Very, very interesting . . .’


Bas slowly sat up, ignoring the snow that had worked its way under the back of his coat.  Morio sat up beside him.  Gunnar was already sitting upright.  Mikio was the last one to push himself up, but at least he didn’t look like he was two steps from being ill anymore.

No one said anything about it.  The boys were used to it.  They all knew that there was something wrong with Mikio’s balance.  He’d had problems since they were little, so when Mikio had stumbled and ended up face down in the snow, the rest of them had followed suit, kind of making a game out of it.  “Damn,” Morio muttered despite the good-natured grin on his face, “it’s cold here.  No wonder you’re so big, Bas.  You’ve gotta be or you’d freeze to death.”

“Shut up, Morio,” Bas mumbled, cheeks pinking slightly.  He knew he was head and shoulders taller than everyone else his age or even a year or two older.  He really didn’t need to be reminded constantly.  Besides, if Morio hadn‘t tried to start the snowball fight that had distracted them from their task of building a giant snow fort, Mikio would have been fine—just fine.  “You okay, Mikio?”

Mikio nodded, and Bas was secretly relieved to see that Mikio’s normal color was returning.  Sometimes it was hard to remember that Mikio really wasn’t quite like the rest of them.  Other times, though?  Bas grimaced inwardly.  He’d been about to suggest that they stop for a breather when he’d noticed that Mikio was starting to look a little pale, a little grayish.  Before he’d been able to get his mouth open, though, Mikio had stumbled in the snow.

He intercepted the scowl on Gunnar’s face, the slight shake of his head.  Gunnar had mentioned earlier that Mikio had actually gotten angry enough to tell Morio to shut up when Morio had asked him if he was all right after one of his episodes.

“You know, I bet we could roll Evan into one big snowball,” Morio ventured at length.

Bas rolled his eyes, hooking his arms around his raised knees.  “Nah.  He squirms too much.”

“Or you could stand still so we can pack snow around you like a living snowman,” Gunnar suggested.

Morio grinned.  “You know, I told Mama and the old man that they should have a little brother for me,” he went on with a shrug.

“What’d they think of that?” Bas asked.

The stupid grin widened.  “The old man thought it was a great idea.  Mama sent me to my room.”

Bas blinked in surprise.  “I thought your mom liked kids.”

Gunnar snorted.  “He suggested it right after he got in trouble for ditching school to hang out with some girl.”

“It wasn’t just some girl!” Morio insisted.  “She’s an older woman!”

Mikio glanced at Bas and shook his head.  “She was twelve—hardly an older woman.”

Morio flopped back in the snow with a happy sigh.  “Ah, the lovely Keiko-chan . . .”

Gunnar snorted again.  “She dumped him the next day.  Guess she got in trouble for ditching school, too.”

“What’d you do all day?” Bas asked.

Pushing himself up so that he was leaning back on his hands, Morio laughed.  “What else?  We went to the movies and then to the arcade.”

“A real Cassanova,” Bas scoffed, pushing himself to his feet and stomping across the yard toward the snow fort they’d been building before Morio had started whipping snowballs at them.

Morio heaved a sigh.  “We’re never gonna get his height,” he mumbled under his breath after Bas was a safe distance away.

Mikio slowly stood up, too.  “If you hadn’t made such a fuss over it, you could’ve,” he pointed out reasonably.

Gunnar grabbed Morio’s sleeve when he started to rise.  “Give me the tape measure,” he said.

Breaking into a grin, Morio laughed.  “Oh, you think you can get it?” he challenged.

Gunnar didn’t bother arguing with him.  “Just give it to me,” he stated once more.

Morio shrugged and dug the tape measure out of his pocket.  “Good luck, Mamo-chan,” he said before running off to help with the snow fort once more.

Gunnar was the last to get up, and when he did, he almost smiled—almost.  Morio’s problem was that he tried to be sneaky in a direct sort of way when he ought to have known that there was no way in the world Bas would ever fall for it.  Gunnar, on the other hand, wasn’t nearly so stupid.

Pulling the end of the measuring tape out, Gunnar stepped over to the very large crater in the snow that was the exact size and shape of one Sebastian Zelig.


Yanking on the bowtie at his throat as he wandered into the kitchen for a bottle of water, Cain stopped short and frowned at the counter.  It was late—almost midnight—and as much as he hated to admit it, he was tired.  Something about being in public, even one of Gin’s Zelig Foundation events, was exhausting.  Every year, he tried to talk her into having the soiree a little earlier in the month.  It never seemed to work out though . . .

Evan shuffled into the kitchen, a doleful expression on his little face.  Cain blinked and stuffed his hands into his pockets, leaning back against the counter as he watched his young son struggle with the refrigerator door.  “Want some help?” he asked in a carefully casual tone of voice.

He shook his head, his shoulders drooping a little more as he scuffed the plastic bottoms of his dark blue footy-pajamas on the floor.

“You want to tell me what’s the matter?” Cain tried again.  “Were the boys mean to you or something?”

“No,” Evan whispered, his voice barely audible.  “Bubby played cars with me.”

Nodding slowly, Cain tried not to smile.  Sometimes the boy was so much like his mother that it was absolutely uncanny, and when he was pouting about something?  ‘Dead on,’ he thought to himself.  “You know, I can’t help you if you won’t tell me what’s bothering you.”

Evan finally turned to face him, a very solemn expression on his tiny face.  “I wanted to go,” he muttered almost sullenly.  “I gots a bow tie.”

Letting out a deep breath, Cain chuckled softly.  “Trust me, Evan.  You didn’t miss a damn thing,” he assured the child.

It didn’t do a thing to assuage him, though.  “But Mama looked beautiful,” he went on, shuffling his feet a little faster.

Cain’s smile widened at Evan’s choice of words.  “Beautiful, huh?  She was, wasn’t she?”

Unhappily, Evan nodded.  “I wanted to dance wif Mama,” he whispered.

Cain stared at Evan for a long moment, then finally pushed himself away from the counter, pulling his hands out of his pockets and holding them out to his son. “You want to dance with Mama,” he repeated.  “Come here, Evan.”

Evan reluctantly held up his arms, allowing Cain to scoop him up.  “Let’s go see if Mama still has her party dress on.”

Settling himself against Cain’s shoulder, Evan tucked his head under Cain’s chin as the two moved through the mansion.

Gin was heading for the stairs,  her hands working the clasp of the delicate white gold necklace she’d worn just for the evening.

“Baby girl,” he called after her.

She stopped and turned, her face immediately brightening as a warm smile surfaced.  “Well, there’s my big boy!” she crooned, leaning up on tip-toe to kiss Evan’s cheek.  “Are you about ready to go to bed?”

“Yeah, about that,” Cain went on.  “Would you mind leaving that dress on a while longer?”

Gin blinked, surprised by Cain’s request, and she glanced down at herself before giggling and reaching up to refasten the necklace once more.  “Okay,” she agreed.

Cain smiled.  “Just wait in the living room,” he told her as he stepped past her to head upstairs.

Gin’s soft giggle lingered behind them, but Cain didn’t stop until he’d stepped into Evan’s bedroom and set the boy back on his feet.

It only took him a minute to locate the burgundy garment bag in the back of the closet that protected Evan’s little tuxedo.  When Evan saw it, he hastily unzipped the onesy and shrugged it off.

The door opened, and Jillian shuffled into the room, yawning wide, rubbing her sleepy eyes.  Cain figured she was after her goodnight kiss,   When she spotted Evan, she blinked a few times.  “Oh!” she suddenly exclaimed, her eyes opening wide.  “Jilli, too!” she insisted, turning on her heel and darting out of the room again.

Cain stood back, letting Evan dress himself.  Sure, he’d have managed to do it faster with help, but Evan was at the age where he just wanted to do everything on his own.  Cain stifled a sigh.  Why did it seem like just yesterday that they were bringing the squirming little bundle of boy home from the hospital?

Evan did let Cain help him tuck in his shirt, though, and tie his shoes.  When he reached out to help him with the bow tie, however, Evan jerked sideways.  “I can do it,” he insisted.

Cain chuckled.  “Okay,” he agreed.  “Do you have your present for your date?”

Evan stopped, his fingers tangled in the ends of the bow tie, and stared at Cain for a moment.  “I get a present?”

“No, a gentleman gives a lady a present when he picks her up for a date, though,” Cain explained.  “Usually a flower or something.”

“But I want a present,” Evan said.

“You’ve got to wait till Christmas for your presents,” Cain told him.

Evan wrinkled his nose.  “I don’t gots a present for Mama.”

“All right,” Cain drawled.  “I’ll go see if I can find something you can give her while you finish tying that.”

Evan nodded.

It only took Cain a few minutes to run down the hall to the studio, and even less time to find what he was after.  By the time he got back, Evan had managed to tie the tie—sort of.  Cain handed him the ‘present’ then straightened out the tie.

“Reese’s peanut butter cup tree!” Evan exclaimed.  “Mama likes these!”

Cain chuckled and grabbed the soft brush off Evan’s bureau to run it through the boy’s hair.  “She does, doesn’t she?”

Evan nodded happily while Cain buttoned the top button of Evan’s tuxedo jacket.  “And Mama’s my date?”

“I’m sure she’ll be happy to be your date,” Cain assured him as he straightened up.  “You ready?”

“Yeah!”

Evan fairly ran out of the room but slowed down in the hallway. He seemed to like the sound of his shoes on the thin carpet, and he kept bending over slightly to watch his feet.

Smiling to himself as he followed along behind his son, Cain wondered why it was that he didn’t feel tired anymore.  Odd thing, really.  After all, he’d spent hours, smiling at everyone and making sure that Gin wasn’t too stressed out at the party.  It never ceased to amaze and disgust him, just how many men thought it was all right to put their hands on his mate, anyway.  Gin never seemed to notice, of course—a hand that lingered a little longer than it ought to in greeting or a chuckle that was a little warmer than it needed to be . . . Cain noticed; of course he did.  Luckily, most men tended to get the message when Cain would slip an arm around his wife, pull her a little closer against his side. Those that didn’t?  It irked him, sure, but he also knew damn well that Gin had absolutely no interest in someone else, and while a part of him would dearly love to smack those guys around, he also knew that he simply couldn’t, no matter how badly he wanted to.

Evan waited for Cain at the head of the staircase.  Cain hid his amusement at the slight anxiety on the boy’s face as he stared down those carpeted steps.  If he were barefoot, he wouldn’t have thought twice about tearing up or down them, but the shoes he was wearing made it a little slippery, and Evan had the sense to know it.  Glancing up at his father, he looked a little indecisive.  Cain supposed that on one hand, he wanted to ask Cain to carry him.  On the other?  That went directly against Evan’s belief that he was a ‘big boy’.

In the end, Cain held out a hand.  “Come on, Evan,” he said gently, taking the child’s left hand.  “Make sure you hold onto the banister,” he admonished.

This solution seemed to appease Evan, and, holding onto Cain’s hand on one side and the safety rail on the other, he descended the stairs.

Gin was sitting on the sofa in the living room between Bas and Gunnar with a video game controller held firmly in her hands and an expression of stark concentration on her face.  She was fighting Bas—and getting her ass kicked, judging from the looks of it.  “Oh!  No fair!” she cried as the announcer on the game proclaimed Gin’s character ‘K.O.’ed’.  “I’ll practice some more, and then you’ll see!” she warned, handing the controller to Gunnar.  He wasn’t exactly a video game freak, but he would play with his cousins when they pestered him.  Just now, however, he passed the controller over to Morio before turning his attention back to the book he’d been reading.

“All right, guys,” Cain said, stepping over to turn off the television.  “Go play that up in Bas’ room if you want.  Go ahead, Evan.”

Evan paused long enough to grin up at his father before dashing over to stand before his mother.  Gin giggled—she always did whenever she saw Evan in his little tuxedo.  “Oh, don’t you look handsome?” she crooned.

Evan pulled the candy out of his pocket and held it out to his mother.  “You can be my date!” he announced.

“Oh, did you get that for me?” she asked, gently taking the candy bar from him.  “Of course I’ll be your date, sweetie.”

“Evan was upset,” Cain explained over his head.  “He wanted to dance with his beautiful mama.”

Gin blinked seconds before breaking into a brilliant smile.  “Is that right?  Aw, I’d love to dance with you, Evan!”

“Aww, that so sweet,” Morio said with a goofy grin and a melodramatic sigh.  “So sweet I think I might vomit.”

Bas rolled his eyes and reached for the Sports Illustrated he’d abandoned when his cousins suggested playing video games.

Gunnar glanced up from his book, staring at Gin and Evan as Cain turned on the radio and found a station that was playing something soft and boring.  “I don’t think the man should be held like that while dancing,” he muttered since Gin had, in fact, picked Evan up to dance with him.

“It’d look weirder if she had to get down on her knees to dance with him, don’t you think?” Mikio added thoughtfully.

Cain just watched, hands in his pockets, a vague smile quirking the corners of his lips as he remembered that day so long ago, the day he’d danced with her in his arms, held against his heart as she tried so hard not to look tired.  Her hair was down back then, long and flowing around her like the breeze, and she’d been so much thinner—painfully so, in his opinion—and not nearly ready for the wedding she’d so wanted, but unwilling to wait another day, too . . . The same woman, the same smile, and the same feeling that he was wholly undeserving of such a rare creature yet grateful and humbled that someone, somewhere, thought that maybe he was . . .

A little tug drew him out of his reverie, and Cain looked down, only to find Jillian standing beside him, a shy little smile on her face as she let go of his leg and held out the pretty red velvet dress she’d put on all by herself.  The front of the dress was a little puckered and drawn, indicating that she’d had trouble with the buttons on the back, but Cain smiled, anyway.  “Don’t you look pretty?”

Jillian’s cheeks took on a rosy flush, and she giggled.  “Jilli can dance, too!” she said, her voice soft, melodic, just like her mama’s, even if Gin wasn’t her biological mother.

“You want to dance,” he said, unfolding his sleeves that he’d tucked up just after their arrival back at the mansion.  “All right.”

She waited patiently while he retied the bow tie and reached for the jacket he’d dropped over the back of a chair, and when he was finished, she held up her little arms, and Cain picked her up, settling her against his shoulder to dance with her.

“Let’s get out of here before we end up being forced to do that, too,” Morio muttered under his breath.  The boys stood up to leave, scooting out of the living room before they could be asked to join in.

Over Evan’s head—he was drifting off to sleep—Gin caught Cain’s gaze and smiled, her eyes suspiciously bright—almost as bright as the smile on her face.  He smiled back, hoping that she could see, that she’d know, just how much she meant to him . . .


“It’s snowing bad out there,” Ryomaru remarked as he peeked out of the window beside the front door.

Cain peeked over his shoulder with a thoughtful frown.  “It’s not that bad—at least, not yet.”

“I don’t know, Dad,” Bas said with a shake of his head.  “It said on the news that we’re going to get a good foot dumped on us by noon.”

“Then it’ll be a good chance for you to practice your tracking skills,” Ryomaru replied.  “We ready yet?”

InuYasha snorted.  “If you’d have just gotten the fucking tree a few days ago,” he muttered, “we wouldn’t be having this discussion.”

“It wasn’t Christmas Eve a few days ago,” Cain said, “and Gin likes to put our Christmas tree up on Christmas Eve.”

InuYasha muttered something that sounded suspiciously like, ‘damned baka’.  Cain rolled his eyes but didn’t comment on it.

“Oh, good!  I’m glad you haven’t left yet,” Gin said as she hurried into the foyer with a knapsack in her hands.  “Here, Sebastian.  You take this.”

He took the bag and frowned at it.  “What’s in it?”

She smiled.  “A couple thermoses of coffee and some cold roast beef sandwiches.”

InuYasha cocked an eyebrow, crossing his arms over his chest.  “What the hell do you think we’re doing?  Going camping?”

She giggled and kissed her father’s cheek.  “No, but sometimes it takes awhile to find the perfect tree,” she explained, “and it’s cold out there.”

He snorted.  “It’s a fucking tree,” he grumbled.  “How hard can it possibly be?”

“Daddy!”

Cain blinked and turned just in time to see Evan wobbling out of the living room.  His shoulder collided with the doorway, propelling him back a few steps, but he shook it off and tried to hurry into the foyer before the men left without him.  He’d managed to put on his snow pants and coat, and he’d yanked his hat down on his head—kind of.  It was a little lopsided.  “Wow, Evan,” Cain remarked with a grin.  “Your shoes are on the wrong feet, though.”

Evan stopped and slowly looked down at his feet.  He seemed to consider it for a moment, then he crossed his left leg behind his right.  “Now they’re on the right side!” he claimed.

Cain chuckled and shook his head.  “Okay, Evan.  If you say so.”

Bas sighed as he stared at his baby brother.  “Shouldn’t you be worried?”

“About what?”

Bas leveled a look at him.  “He just ran into the wall, Dad,” he pointed out, “and it’s not the first time he’s done that.”

Cain rolled his eyes and smacked his gloves against his left hand.  “He’s a year and a half old, Bas.  He’s fine.”

Gin called Evan’s name, and the boy turned quickly—too quickly—and he slammed right into the bottom of the banister.  Momentarily stunned, or so it would seem, he stood there for a moment then shook himself before throwing his arms around his mama’s legs with a happy little shriek of laughter.

“That’s not fine,” Bas maintained stubbornly.

“You know, he’s not the only child to run into something,” Cain remarked.

Bas tilted his head, his expression growing more dubious by the moment.

“If memory serves, you ran into the glass door before,” Cain went on, “and you were seven.”

Bas snorted.  “I wasn’t seven,” he grumbled.

Cain made a face.  “All right, you were almost seven.  Better?”

“That was Mom’s fault,” he maintained stubbornly.  “She’d just cleaned that door. I didn’t realize it was closed.”

Gin pressed her lips together, a flash of instant and acute guilt flickering over her features.  “Well, I did say that I was sorry for that,” she murmured.

“Oh, for fuck’s sake!” InuYasha growled.  “Can we just go do this or do you really have to stand around having a family pow-wow first?”

Cain sighed and wondered if anyone would notice if InuYasha came up missing during the tree search.  Kagome might.  Everyone else?  Probably not . . .

“Daddy!  I wanna go, too!” Evan hollered, squirming to get out of his mother’s arms.

Cain frowned, mostly because Gin had already told him that she’d rather that he didn’t take Evan with him, maintaining that it was part and parcel with the deal.  After all, Cain had ‘hogged’ Bas, or so she’d said, so it was only right that Evan should stay home and bake cookies with her.  Still, he also couldn’t help but think that Gin did have Jillian here with her, and he’d always told Bas that picking out the Christmas tree was totally a ‘guy thing’, and true, Evan was still very little, but so was Bas the first year they’d gone out to find a tree . . . “Well . . .” he drawled, casting Gin a contemplative look.

“Baby piggy,” she whispered to him.

Cain sighed.  There was just no winning against that particular argument, was there?  “Uh, buddy, why don’t you stay home with Mama?  She’s going to make cookies, and you love cookies.”

Evan thought it over.  “Gingerbread mans?” he asked.

Gin giggled and kissed Evan’s cheek.  “Yes, gingerbread men and chocolate crinkles and peppermint thumbprint cookies and peanut butter bites . . .”

Evan’s eyes grew large and round.  “Lots of cookies!” he breathed almost reverently.  “I make cookies with Mama and Gramma!” he decided, yanking the hat off his head.

Gin positively beamed.  “Be careful out there, boys,” she warned despite the smile on her face.  “It’s cold, and if the snow picks up, you  could get lost . . . Cain?”

“Hmm?” he asked as he tugged on his coat and reached for his scarf.

“If it gets too bad out there, don’t worry about the tree,” Gin said.  “We’ll figure something else out if we have to.”

He nodded and smiled, having no intention to come back without her Christmas tree.  All the same, he kissed her cheek, tousled Evan’s hair, and headed out.


“What about this one?” Morio asked for the millionth time since the men had set out hours ago to find the ’perfect tree’.

Bas stopped and eyed the tree critically.  “Too short,” he finally said, turning to move on.

Morio snorted.  “It’s not that short,” he argued.

“It’s a fucking tree,” InuYasha grumbled, stomping ahead of them all.  “Ain’t no one gonna notice much about it, anyway, once you stick all your crap on it.”

“Bas is right,” Cain insisted.  “That one was too short.”

“There!” InuYasha said, stopping in front of a slightly taller, much narrower evergreen.  “It’s tall, and it’s green, and it’s a fucking tree.”

Walking around it to inspect it from all sides, Cain refrained from comment until he’d finished his perusal.  “And it’s flat on that side.  Come on.”

“Who the hell cares?” InuYasha demanded, stomping to keep up with Cain.  “So you turn that side toward the wall!  Like anyone is gonna notice that one side is flat!”

“Gin will notice,” Cain maintained.  Glancing at his father-in-law, he let out a long sigh.  “Anyway, InuYasha, of all people, I’d have thought that you’d understand.”

“Understand what?” he growled, crossing his arms over his chest and looking rather miserable since he’d refused to wear a hat and had to keep flicking snow off his hanyou ears.

Cain shrugged.  He wasn’t entirely sure that he believed Ryomaru’s claim that InuYasha had promised to be nice to him during his visit.  ‘Maybe I should test that out . . .’ he mused.  “Understand how it is to do something like this.  It’s . . . it’s about more than just picking out a tree, right?  It’s about doing whatever I can do to make sure that Gin’s Christmas is the best one yet . . . about creating good memories that she—we—can cherish forever.  It’s about the love and devotion that comes with the goodwill and cheer of the holiday season . . . It’s about—”

“It’s about sounding like a Hallmark card,” Bas muttered, staring at Cain in a rather nervous sort of way.

Cain ignored Bas’ commentary and figured he’d twist the knife a little more.  “It’s about making promises to the one you love—the one you live for.”  He shrugged and slipped an arm around his father-in-law’s shoulders for good measure.  “It’s not just about the tree, you know?  It’s about the family that . . . that gathers together to embrace the spirit of Christmas.  That’s really the most important thing, don’t you agree, InuYasha?”

InuYasha stared at him for a long minute.  If his expression meant anything at all, he was trying desperately to quell the rapidly escalating desire to tell Cain just what he thought of his over-the-top mushy speech.  Either he’d forget his promise to be nice and therefore break the Christmas promise he’d made to Kagome, or he’d have to bite off his own tongue to keep from saying whatever he had on his mind.  Either way, Cain figured it’d be good for at least a chuckle or two . . .

In the end, InuYasha snorted.  Loudly.  Then he shrugged off Cain’s arm.  “Keh!  Just pick a fucking tree, will you?  It’s damn cold out here!”

“Nice,” Ryomaru murmured as InuYasha stomped on ahead of them.  “Didn’t think you had it in you, Zelig, but I gotta admit, I’m impressed.”

Cain shot his brother-in-law a quick look before quickening his pace.  “Don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said as the barest hint of a grin twitched on his lips.


“For you.”

Gunnar blinked and looked up from his book, only to find Jillian standing before him, holding out a large piece of paper with a bunch of scribbles on it.  “What’s that?” he asked, nodding at the paper.

Jillian smiled.  “Jilli draw you a picture,” she said.

“Oh,” he replied, taking the paper from her.  “Thanks.”

She giggled quietly then ran off.  Gunnar sat still for a moment then set the picture aside.

“Hmm, must means she likes you,” Bas remarked, nodding at the paper Gunnar had put on the coffee table.

“She’s all right.  At least she’s not as hyper as Evan,” he said.

“No one’s as hyper as him,” Bas countered as Gin hurried into the living room with a tray of cookies and eggnog and chattering away, about a mile a minute at Cain.  “Well, maybe she is . . .” he added, nodding in the direction of his mother.

Gunnar grunted.   “Just how much sugar did she eat?”

Bas shrugged as Evan streaked through the living room with his little plastic Power Puppy guitar—and no clothing, whatsoever.  “Not as much as he did.”

Watching the child out of the corner of his eye, Gunnar didn’t look impressed.  “That is why I’m glad my parents stopped after having me.”

“Never say never,” Bas replied with a grin.

Gunnar’s response was cut short by the beep of his cell phone.  “Aren’t you supposed to be studying?” he asked when he answered without bothering with pleasantries.

“You’d think that you’d miss me enough to at least say hello first,” Isabelle pouted.  “Anyway, I just called to say Merry Christmas to you guys.”

“Merry Christmas,” he echoed.  “Nice try, though.  So why did you really call?”

She laughed.  In the background, he could hear the click of computer keys.  He wasn’t nearly as good at talking on the phone and typing, but it wasn’t surprising to him that Isabelle was.  After all, she had perfected the art of multitasking long ago.  Honestly, he’d seen her carry on a conversation with one person while texting someone else while she was riding her bicycle.  She might even be able to chew gum and walk at the same time, too . . .

“That was the reason I called,” she chided.  “But since you’re on the phone, did you guys ever manage to get Bastian’s height?”

He rolled his eyes since he’d figured that it was something like that.  “Of course,” he replied, glancing at Bas to see if he’d overheard her question.  He didn’t seem to have.

“And?” she prompted when it became obvious that he wasn’t going to volunteer any more information.

Gunnar snorted since Isabelle’s guess was actually the closest.  “And you lost,” he lied.  He could wait till he got back to Japan to hear her gloat, anyway.

She heaved a sigh.  “I suppose you won, didn’t you?”

“Yes,” he replied simply.  “Yes, I did, and I already spent the money.”

“Figures,” she pouted.  “I suppose you guys are having a blast without me?”

“Don’t we always?” he parried.

Isabelle giggled.  “All right, then,” she said.  “See you when you get back.”

“Bye,” he replied, lowering the phone and closing the connection.

“Bitty?” Bas asked.

Gunnar nodded as he set his phone on the coffee table.  “She said to tell you Merry Christmas.”

Bas nodded.

Evan darted over and threw himself on the sofa with a hyper giggle.  Bas rolled his eyes and pushed him back off onto the floor.  “Go put some clothes on, Evan,” he warned.

Evan laughed harder.  “I’m naked!” he announced.

Shaking his head, Bas made a face.  “I know.  Now go put your pajamas on or Santa won’t come tonight.”

That got Evan’s attention quickly enough.  “Really?” he squeaked, his eyes growing wide.  “Really, Bubby?  No Santa?”

Bas nodded.  “That’s right, and if he gets here while you’re still naked, he’ll only leave you coal.”

Those wide eyes started sparkling in an entirely suspect way, and a moment later, the scent of tears assailed Bas’ nostrils.  “But I’m a good boy!” he wailed as the first tears started to fall.  “Mama said!”

“Then you’d better go get your pajamas on before Santa gets here, huh?” Bas continued.

Evan nodded and shot off the sofa and out of the living room.

Gunnar snorted.  “You’re going to go to hell for that,” he stated flatly.

“Pfft.  As if you wanted to see Evan’s ass,” he shot back.

He opened his mouth to say something, but he stopped abruptly when another thought occurred to him.  “Why didn’t your parents tell him to go get dressed?”

This time, Bas heaved a sigh.  “Mom thinks it’s cute when Evan starts streaking.  Dad doesn’t always seem to notice.”

That earned him a scowl.  “What’s that mean?  How can you not notice a naked runt, high on sugar, tearing through your house?”

Bas shrugged offhandedly and reached for a cookie.  “You’ve met Dad, right?”

Gunnar snorted.

“What about your dad?” Cain asked, leaning over the back of the sofa and nabbing the cookie out of Bas’ hand before he could stick it into his mouth.

“You could get your own,” Bas pointed out, reaching for the cookie and missing when Cain lifted his hand out of reach.

“You’re closer,” Cain maintained, biting the leg off the gingerbread man.

Bas rolled his eyes but reached for another cookie.  “Anyway, don’t you think you ought to do something about your little streaker?”

Cain blinked and shook his head, as though he couldn’t quite grasp what Bas was talking about.  “What streaker?”

“Evan,” he garbled around a mouthful of cookie.  Bungles grabbed the rest of the cookie out of Bas’ hand and took off before he could do anything about it.

“Oh . . . Was your brother naked again?”

Bas didn’t respond to that, but he did shoot Gunnar an ‘I Told You So’ look.  “Is Mom okay with the tree now?” he asked, grabbing a third cookie off the plate.

Stuffing the rest of the cookie into his mouth, Cain grimaced.  “She keeps trying not to look at the flat side,” he said after he’d swallowed, “and she’s failing miserably.”

Bas nodded.  He’d figured it’d come down to something like that.  After all, Gin tended to be very, very particular about the things that she allowed into the house, so it stood to reason that she’d notice that right off.  Cain had barely gotten the tree set in the stand when Gin had seen it, and if one were to ask Bas, he’d swear that his father was near smiling when he calmly explained that InuYasha had chosen the tree.

Which was a bit of a stretch.  A couple hours after the Hallmark card speech, InuYasha had apparently had enough, and when Cain had pointed out that one side of the tree was flat, he’d snorted loudly and cut it down anyway with his claws, completely ignoring the saw that Cain had brought along.  Bas was of the opinion that they should keep looking.  Cain, however, had insisted that cutting down two trees would be too much of a waste.

Evan ran back into the room, clad in fuzzy red footy-pajamas, but he still looked anxious, almost beside himself, and he barreled straight into Bas’ knees.  “I’m good now, Bubby, right?  Santa won’t bring me coal now, right?” he babbled.

Cain blinked and frowned.  “Huh?”

“Bas was terrorizing Evan,” Gunnar explained.

“How so?”

Bas shot his father a look.  “He was naked, remember?”

“Don’t terrorize your brother, Sebastian—at least, not on Christmas Eve.”

“Will you quit shaking the presents?” InuYasha growled.  Bas glanced over, expecting to see Morio nosing around since he’d been trying to get a good look at the largest present toward the back all evening.  It wasn’t Morio.

“Aww, lighten up, old man,” Ryomaru said.  “I wasn’t shaking the presents.  I was just making sure that none of them was a bomb or something.”

“A bomb?” InuYasha repeated.  “Are you stupid?”

Ryomaru grinned.  “You never know.  I mean, Zelig is the North American tai-youkai.  Maybe someone wants to off him.  What better way than to send him a bomb disguised as a Christmas present?”

“Twisted little monkey,” Cain muttered under his breath.

“You’re as bad as your pup,” InuYasha scoffed.

“For the last time, Ryo, that big present isn’t for you, anyway,” Nezumi remarked with an exasperated shake of her head.  “You’re not as bad as Morio; you’re worse.”

“Thank you, Mama,” Morio grinned.

She spotted her son, skulking around the back of the tree.  “But not by much,” she amended.

“You know, there’re a lot of gifts under there,” Mikio said slowly and without taking his eyes off the sprawling mountain of gifts.  “If we opened one apiece tonight, would it really matter tomorrow morning?”

“Oh, I know that trick,” Bas said.  “They’ll give you one to open, all right, but it’s always pajamas or something like that.”

“Or worse,” Gunnar added in a bored tone of voice.  “It’ll be one of those awful Christmas sweaters.”

Ryomaru snorted.  “Well, that’s just mean,” he huffed.  “Come here, Morio.  You can open this one.”

Morio ran around the tree and grabbed the package out of his father’s hand but stopped and shot him an droll sort of look.  “It’s for you, old man,” he said.

Ryomaru’s grin widened.

“No one’s opening anything tonight,” InuYasha grumbled, getting up off the chair near the fire and snatching the gift out of Morio’s hands.  “Baka.”

“Aww, come on, old man!” Ryomaru complained, trying in vain to retrieve the present that InuYasha had confiscated.

“Just wait till tomorrow, baka,” InuYasha growled.

“But it’s Christmas!”

“Not till tomorrow!”

Across the room, Kagome sighed.

“Gin will kick your asses if you break anything,” Cain raised his voice to be heard over the squabbling hanyou.

“Gin’ll have to get in line,” Nezumi muttered, crossing her arms over her chest as she frowned at her mate.

“This is getting kind of ugly,” Morio remarked with a stupid grin.

Bas nodded and slowly shook his head.  Gunnar watched the debacle with a rather bored expression on his face.  “This deserves popcorn,” Bas decided.

Gunnar glanced at him and nodded.  “Make a bag for me while you’re at it.”


Cain yawned and stretched.  He could tell without opening his eyes that it was early.  The room was still dark, which was probably why the boys weren’t beating down the door to wake everyone up to open presents.

Opening his eyes long enough to glance at the clock, he sighed.  Nearly six-thirty in the morning?  It didn’t seem that late . . .

For a moment, he considered closing his eyes and going back to sleep.  Unfortunately, he’d been up way too late the night before, waiting until the boys finally passed out so that he could sneak the special ‘Santa’ presents downstairs.  He’d found them all in the living room.  Gunnar was sprawled out on the sofa while Bas, Morio, and Mikio were camped out with Evan and Jillian in front of the tree.  By the time he was finished with that, he’d remembered that he had to get Gin’s cake made, so he hadn’t actually gotten into bed until about three in the morning.

It was a little unfair, really.  The one night in over a year when Evan wasn’t in his bed, and he couldn’t savor it because he had stuff he had to do.

He’d left the cake on the counter to cool and figured he’d frost it before he gave it to Gin, and as much as he’d love to roll back over and go to sleep again, he knew that there was no way he could.

Carefully extracting himself from the warmth of Gin’s body curled around him, Cain slipped out of bed and pulled on the first things he found in the closet, and, after pausing to smile at his sleeping wife, he trotted down the steps of the loft and out of the studio.

The mansion was almost eerily silent as he moved on down the hallway toward the stairs—a far cry from how it had been for the last couple weeks.  He supposed it wasn’t often that he was awake before everyone else in the house, yet there was something altogether comforting about it, too.  Maybe it was the subtle feeling of warmth that only came when there were other people living in a place, and the more people who gathered under one roof, the stronger the sense of warmth.  It was a Christmas-y kind of feeling, he decided as he loped down the steps, his bare feet making hardly any sound at all.

He stopped short when he entered the living room, smiling vaguely at the mass of children sleeping on the floor.  At some point during the night, Gunnar had vacated the sofa and was lying on the floor near Bas, who still held the remote for the digital camcorder in his slackened grip.  The camera itself was set up and pointed directly at the huge fireplace nearby, the red light flashing lazily, indicating that it was still in the process of recording.  Evan slept, huddled against Bas on one side while Jillian cuddled against Bas’ other side.  Morio had his legs slung over Mikio, and all of them had blankets that someone had covered them up with at some point after Cain had gone to bed.

It didn’t take Cain long to erase a few hours of the footage—the first three hours of the recording.  It wouldn’t do, he supposed, to have them watch it and to see him sticking those presents from Santa under the tree.  He hadn’t realized last night that Bas was trying to catch the big guy, red handed.  He should have, though.  He had a feeling that Bas might not still buy into the whole Santa-thing, but he hadn’t asked, and even then, Cain figured that it was likely more Evan than Bas who had wanted to see Santa for himself.

That done, however, Cain lit the logs that were already arranged on the hearth then carefully stepped over bodies on his way to the kitchen.

He took a few minutes to start the coffee pot and to put on some water for Gin’s morning tea.  He’d just turned on the stove when the phone on the counter rang.

“Hello?” he said, grabbing the phone as quickly as he could so that it didn’t wake everyone in the house.

“Merry Christmas, Daddy,” Bellaniece’s voice greeted him.  “You sound more awake than I figured you’d be.  It’s what?  About seven there?”

“Yeah,” he agreed, a gentle smile on his face at the very sound of his eldest child’s voice.  “Wish you were here.”

He heard her sigh.  “Me, too,” she admitted.  “Kichiro already promised that we’d come next year.”

“Hmm,” Cain drawled, tapping his claws on the countertop.  “You get anything good this year?”

“Fantastic sex,” she quipped then giggled when Cain snorted loudly.  “Oh, did you mean presents?”

“There are some things your father still doesn’t want to know,” Cain remarked with a frown as a pair of slender arms slipped around his waist to give him a quick squeeze.

“It’s a natural part of life, Daddy,” she chided.  He could hear the amusement in her voice.  “After all, I’m sure you got some Christmas booty this year, too.”

“We’re not talking about me, and even if we were, there are certain things that Daddies don’t tell their daughters, either.”

She laughed.  “Okay,” she relented.  “Tell everyone I said Merry Christmas.”

“I will,” he promised.  “Love you, my lady.”

“You, too, Daddy.  Give the babies hugs from me.”

“The same,” he told her.  With a sigh, he hung up the phone.  When she said ‘babies’, he knew well enough that she meant all of her younger siblings—even if a certain one wasn’t exactly what he’d call a baby anymore . . .

“Mmm, this is so good, Zelig-sensei!” Gin said.

Cain turned in time to watch her take a bite of the cake she’d cut while he was on the phone, and he frowned.  It was already frosted?  Huh?

“Wow, you did a really great job!” she insisted as she stuck another huge bite into her mouth.  “Did you fib about not knowing how to bake?”

“Uh, well . . .”

“And the coconut gives it such an interesting texture!” she went on.

Cain blinked.  ‘Coconut . . .?’

“Oh!” she exclaimed softly, setting the plate on the counter.  “I want to give you my present, then!  It might not be as wonderful as this cake, but maybe it’ll be all right!”

With that, she hurried out of the kitchen, leaving Cain alone.  He stared for a long moment then strode over to the counter where the cake was sitting, but it didn’t take him long to realize that it wasn’t the one he’d baked last night.

But . . . where was the one he had baked?

It wasn’t in the trash can, and it wasn’t in the refrigerator.  It wasn’t on one of the cake stands that Gin kept on the counter for the cakes she made for him, either.  It wasn’t anywhere, as far as Cain could tell.

Darting back into the kitchen with a large box in her hands, Gin giggled and handed it over to Cain before reaching for her plate once more.  “Go ahead,” she said before stuffing another bite into her mouth.  “Open it!”

He stared at her for a long moment, trying to decide whether or not to tell her that the cake she was eating wasn’t his gift to her.  The happiness in her expression, however, stopped him, and he carefully ran a claw under the tape on the back of the paper to open it, instead.

‘Wa-a-a-ait . . . You’re not going to tell her that you didn’t make that cake?’ his youkai voice demanded.

‘Let me open this first,’ he argued.

‘Well, you’ve got to tell her,’ the voice went on.  ‘You can’t mislead your mate like that!’

‘I’ll tell her,’ he insisted, ‘eventually.’

‘. . . I don’t even think I know you anymore, Zelig.’

‘Okay, stranger.  Then shut up, will you?’

‘Pfft.’

He set the paper aside—Gin had decorated it with her own fingerprints—and he carefully opened the box.  “Oh . . . Did you make this?” he asked as he carefully lifted the dark blue sweater out of the box.

Gin shuffled her feet, nervously watching him as he turned the sweater to look at the front and back.  “D-do you like it?” she asked a little breathlessly.

“Wow,” he said, setting it on the counter so he could pull off his shirt.  “It looks like one you bought at the store.”

“Y-you think so?” she asked with a giggle.  “It was nothing, but this cake . . .! You’re my cake fairy! Cain, I love you.”

He’d barely gotten the sweater tugged over his head when she threw her arms around him.  He sighed.  He really ought to tell her the truth, that the cake she thought he’d made wasn‘t the one he’d baked, at all . . . “Y-yeah, about that, Gin . . .”

“Mama!  Daddy!  Santa came!  Santa came!” Evan hollered as he barreled into the kitchen and straight into his parents’ legs.

Gin giggled and kissed Cain’s cheek before scooping up her son.  “Did he?  Wow!  We’d better go see what he brought you, huh?”

“Can Jilli open presents, Daddy?” Jillian asked, tugging on Cain’s pant leg.

He sighed but smiled as he picked her up.  “I don’t know,” he said slowly.  “Is Bas up yet?”

Jillian giggled and snuggled against his chest as he followed Gin into the living room.

A huge bang echoed through the room.  Cain blinked when he spotted Ryomaru standing over an armload of firewood that he’d brought in from outside.  The ruckus he’d created when he dropped the wood was enough to rouse the boys.  “What?  You guys haven’t even started opening presents yet?” he exclaimed with a goofy grin.

InuYasha stomped into the living room and clouted his son a good one.  “You scared your mother,” he growled as Ryomaru rubbed his head but laughed.

“Merry Christmas, Papa,” Gin said as she hurried over to hug InuYasha.  “Cain made me the best cake!  Do you want to try it?”

InuYasha snorted.  “I’d rather—”

“Merry Christmas to you, too, Gin,” Kagome interrupted as she hurried into the room and hugged her daughter.  “Did you finish that sweater for Cain?”

Gin didn’t answer, but she did turn to smile at Cain.  Kagome noticed the sweater and smiled, too.

“Oi, Nez!  This one’s for you,” Ryomaru said as he plopped a present onto his wife’s lap.

Nezumi rolled her eyes but smiled as she tore into the wrapping paper.

Cain set Jillian on her feet and chuckled as she ran off toward the tree.  Evan was already down and gone, and Gin slipped her arms around his waist.  He hadn’t noticed that she’d come back over to him again.  “They just keep getting better, don’t they?” she murmured as the sounds of ripping paper filled the air.

“What do?”

She giggled.  “Christmases.”

Cain smiled down at her, wrapping an arm around her shoulders.  “They do,” he agreed, shoving the idea of telling her about the cake aside for the time being.  After all, he could tell her later, right?


“That was your favorite Christmas?” Gin asked, leaning up to stare at Cain with a bemused smile on her face.  “Because of that sweater?”

He shrugged.  “You worked hard on it,” he reminded her.  “I mean, you made it for me.”

Her smile faltered, and Gin bit her lip, her ears twitching almost nervously.  “Y-yeah, about that sweater . . .”

“What about it?” he asked.  “I think I’ll wear that in the morning.  It’s in the closet, right?”

“Uh, Cain . . .”

“Hmm?”

She gave a half-hearted giggle and cleared her throat.  “I should tell you . . . I didn’t make that sweater, Cain,” she blurted, twisting her hands together in her lap.

That got his attention.  “What?”

She winced.  “I bought it . . .”

“Gin!”

“Well . . . I tried to make a sweater for you,” she hurried on to explain, cheeks bright red in acute embarrassment.  “I really did, but . . . But it was really hard, and I just couldn’t get it right, so the one that I made ended up looking like it’d fit about five of you at the same time, so I . . .” She bit her lip.  “I went to the store and found that one and . . . And I cut out the tags . . .”

Cain’s mouth dropped open at Gin’s admission.  “You . . . bought it . . .” he reiterated.

Her ears flattened, and she nodded.  “I’m sorry, Cain . . . I didn’t realize you put so much value in it . . .”

Cain frowned.  “I worked for weeks, trying to figure out how to make a decent cake,” he told her.  “And you’re the one who asked me to do it, and now you’re telling me that you bought that sweater?”

“I-I-I’ll make you another one,” she hurried on to say.  “I promise!”

He sighed but finally chuckled softly.  “It’s all right, Gin.  You tried, and that’s good enough for me.”

She finally dared to peek up at him through her thick fringe of bangs since she still refused to raise her head.  “You forgive me for lying to you?”

He smiled.  “Come here,” he said, pulling her back against his chest.  “It’s not the present that matters as much as the thought that went into it.”

Gin smiled, too, as she slipped her arms around his waist.  “You’re right, Zelig-sensei.  You’re so smart!”

Cain chuckled and kissed her forehead.  “Speaking of cake, I think I’m going to go down and get a slice of mine,” he said.  “You want anything while I’m in the kitchen?”

Gin shrugged.  “I don’t need anything, but if you wanted to get me a cup of tea, I wouldn’t say no to that.”

He nodded and headed for the stairs.

Gin sighed as she watched him go.  She really hadn’t realized that the sweater meant that much to him, had she?  At the time, she’d felt bad enough, but Nezumi had convinced her that it’d be all right.  After all, she had made the sweater for Cain, even if it had turned out badly.  But she hadn’t thought that he’d have said it was his best Christmas, ever . . .

The trill of her cell phone interrupted her thoughts, and Gin sighed once more as she reached for the device off her nightstand.  “Hello?”

“Hey, baby girl.  Just figured I’d call and wish you a Merry Christmas,” Ryomaru’s voice sounded on the other end of the connection.

“Thanks, Ryomaru,” she replied with a weak smile.  “How are things in Tokyo?”

“Aww, you know, same ol’, same ol’.  Zelig get you anything decent this year?”

“We haven’t opened presents yet.  In fact, it’s still Christmas Eve here.”

“That right?  Well, as long as you didn’t ask him to bake you another cake or something,” he scoffed.

“Cain did a great job on that cake!” Gin insisted with a frown.

Ryomaru snorted.  “Yeah, your dog thought so, too.”

She frowned.  “What’s that mean?”

Ryomaru chuckled.  “Went to the kitchen to make a sandwich, and your dog was on the stool, eating that cake,” he explained.  “I guess that one at least wasn’t so bad, but the others he’d made?  They were nasty.”

Gin’s mouth dropped open, and she slowly shook her head.  “That can’t be,” she said.  “He gave me the cake in the morning.”

“Keh!  He gave you the cake I made in the morning,” he corrected.  “Felt bad for him—don’t tell him I said that.  He really did try, I guess, and it wasn’t his fault that the dog was hungry.  Anyway, it was late, and you guys were already in bed, so I baked up that coconut cream cake and left it for him.”

“Uh . . . Really?”

“Anyway, Morio got me the newest Turbo Fighter game, and he’s beating on me while I’m talking to you, so I’ve gotta go.  Merry Christmas, baby girl.”

“Merry Christmas,” she replied.

“I worked for weeks, trying to figure out how to make a decent cake, and you’re the one who asked me to do it, and now you’re telling me that you bought that sweater?”

She snorted indelicately as her frown deepened.  “Is that right, Zelig-sensei?” she mused to herself.  He’d made her feel terrible about having bought that sweater, and he’d given her a cake that he hadn’t made . . .?

‘I’m sure he has his reasons, dollface,’ her youkai voice chided.  ‘Just ask him.’

Gin wrinkled her nose.  ‘I’m sure he does,’ she allowed as she heard the door of the studio below open and close.  ‘I think I will.’

“We’re out of honey, so I put sugar in your tea,” Cain said as he climbed the steps.

Gin straightened her back and cocked her head to one side as Cain set her tea on the nightstand.

“I thought I heard you talking,” he said as he took a bite of cake.  “Were you on the phone?”

“Yes,” she said, squaring her shoulders as she lifted her chin a notch.  “I was talking to Ryomaru.  He called to wish us a merry Christmas.”

“Oh, yeah?  That was nice of him.”

She nodded.  “Tell me something, Zelig-sensei.”

“What’s that?” he asked, completely oblivious to the bomb she was about to drop on him.

“About that cake . . .”