"Hey Pat!" Roman greeted as he entered Patton's house, grinning as he made his way into the kitchen where Patton was putting groceries on the counter. He had just gotten home before Roman had come over. Patton turned to greet him, pulling his scarf down from his face and smiling his way.

"Hey Roman! I just picked up some stuff for today. I also stopped by to get our mugs." He said, turning to grab a bag that held the cups they had made for each other in their pottery class. "I haven't looked at them yet, so don't worry."

Roman rushed over to grab for the bag, Patton laughing at his excitement. "C'mon, let's open them up! I wanna see what you made me!"

"Okay, okay." Patton agreed with a laugh, letting Roman take the bag and pull out the mugs. The mugs were wrapped in lots of paper to avoid them breaking on their trip home, and were marked with a small R and P to indicate which belonged to each of them. Roman handed Patton the one with the R on it and took the one with the P for himself, looking at Patton excitedly.

"You go first. I wanna know what you think of it." He said. Patton obliged, smiling as he slowly unraveled the mug in his hands. Roman bounced excitedly beside of him, quietly ushering him to go faster.

When Patton did finally get it unwrapped it revealed a mug painted in a light blue color with '#1 DAD FRIEND' painted on it in black, with the 'R' in friend painted red. Patton instantly broke out into a grin, admiring the mug before looking up at Roman again, wrapping his arms around his friend happily. "I love it! It's perfect, Roman. Thank you."

"I'm glad you like it. It is accurate, after all. You're the greatest dad friend anyone could ask for." Roman said, hugging Patton back. They lingered for a few minutes before Patton pulled back to urge Roman to open his mug now.

"It's your turn!" He said, waving at the wrapped mug. Roman laughed and obliged, unwrapping his mug much faster than Patton had.

Once he got the paper off of the mug it revealed a red cup with a small painted crown on the side, a small blue heart-shaped jewel in the middle of the crown. Roman had a similar reaction to Patton, lots of grinning and hugging and thanking him for the mug. "It's wonderful, Pat! Almost as perfect as I am."

"I'm glad you like it." Patton smiled, setting his new mug down on the countertop. "That's not the only thing I picked up for the both of us! Look at what I got." Patton reached into a grocery bag he had set on the counter as well, pulling out two large boxes, both of them gingerbread houses for the two of them to try making.

"I haven't tried making one of these in years!" Roman took one of the boxes from Patton's hands, eyes shining as he looked over the box. He looked up at Patton with wide eyes, clutching the box close to his chest. "Can we make them now? I'm so excited!"

"Of course!" Patton responded, going to set his own box down at the table, Roman following. "Let me just take my scarf and jacket off first, it's too warm in here for these." He stepped out into the living room to hang up his things, heading back to the kitchen to find that Roman had somehow already pulled everything out of his box and was ready to start on building. "Well you work fast!"

"Sorry," Roman chuckled, removing his hands from the gingerbread house parts for a moment. "I just can't wait! I loved doing these every year."

"I always found them really hard," Patton said, starting to open his box and take out the various sweets needed to build his house. "I thought it'd be fun to try it again though, now that I'm older! Maybe I'll do a bit better."

"Ooh! I have an idea!" Roman said, gleam in his eye as he looked at Patton. "We should make it a competition! See who can make the best one, and whoever loses has to buy dinner tonight."

Patton hummed, thinking it over briefly. After a moment he smiled, nodding. "Alright, we can be competitive. Let's see who can build a better gingerbread house!"

With that the two were off, preparing their icing and starting on the walls of their houses. Patton was going fast with his while Roman tried to keep a steady pace, holding his walls up carefully to allow the icing to really hold the walls together. Once they had their walls up they went to work on the decorations, opening bags of candy to line their house's roofs with, Patton once more going quickly while Roman tried to make his looks the best.

As Patton was concentrating on icing a piece of candy to the roof Roman reached over to nab a gumdrop from Patton's bag of candy. Patton didn't seem to notice as Roman popped the candy into his mouth, smiling to himself as he went back to work on his own house. Some more time passed silently as the two focused on building before Roman looked over again. Patton was still very focused on his building so Roman snatched another gumdrop to eat. This continued on for a while, Roman stealing gumdrops every now and then before Patton was down to just a few gumdrops, which he was now looking to use.

"What happened to all of my gumdrops?" Patton questioned, frowning as he picked up the bag. "I swear I had a lot more than this..."

Roman snickered from beside of him, drawing Patton's attention. It was only then that Patton even suspected anything, noticing Roman happened to be chewing on something. "Roman! You can't steal my gumdrops, that's cheating!"

"To be fair, we never really established any rules to this competition." Roman pointed out with a laugh, causing Patton to shake his head. "Aw c'mon, Pat. I'm just trying to win!"

"Plus these things taste amazing, how could I not want to eat all of them?" Roman took a gumdrop from his own bag, holding it out for Patton. "Here, try one of mine."

Patton took the gumdrop from Roman and tried it himself, trying to keep a straight face and shrugging his shoulders. "It's still cheating," he insisted, but he was smiling now. He reached over to steal another one from Roman, who gasped in offense. "They are really good, though."

"How dare you?" Roman asked dramatically, hand over his heart. Patton giggled as he ate the gumdrop, going back to building his house.

"Payback," he shrugged, piping icing on his house for the next piece of candy to go. "I mean, you did say we hadn't established any rules before, so I didn't do anything wrong."

"Oh, it's definitely on now." Roman laughed, going back to his gingerbread house too. Both of them continued to try sabotaging the other throughout their building, laughing and having a great time despite it being a lot more difficult now.

They were building for a while before Roman finally stopped, setting down his icing bag and leaning back in his seat. "I think I'm finally done! This is as perfect as I can make my house."

"I don't think mine is gonna get any better than this, so I'll just be done with you." Patton laughed beside of him, setting down his icing as well. Roman's house was standing tall with rainbow candy decorations around the roof and side of the house, each put on with the perfect amount of icing. Patton's on the other hand had started to have some problems. His walls had stayed up just fine at first, but at some point while building something had gone wrong. The walls were collapsing, only standing because he had situated them to leave against each other. The candy on his house was dropping, he hadn't used enough icing for some of them so they were beginning to fall, and others had far too much icing so it was all you could see.

"I think it's pretty clear who the winner here is." Patton laughed, looking over at Roman, still happy despite the clear differences in their houses. He had fun, even if it didn't turn out exactly how he wanted.

"I think so too! I mean, just look at how beautiful this is," Roman grinned, but he wasn't pointing at his own house. "It's perfect. How could I possibly compete? I guess dinners on me then."

"Wha-" Patton started to question Roman when his friend stood from the table, not letting Patton get a word in. He didn't know why on earth Roman would be saying this, especially since as he called the house perfect it's walls had immediately collapsed, but Roman clearly wasn't going to argue this. Patton gave up disagreeing pretty quickly, and soon enough a pizza ordered by Roman was on the way to Patton's house.

After the pizza arrived Patton and Roman found themselves on the couch in Patton's living room, Disney's Frozen playing on the screen in front of them. The two were practically laying on each other as close as they were sitting, Patton's face a permanent shade of pink while they were together like this. He certainly wasn't complaint though.

Just as the voice of Idina Menzel played from the tv singing "Let It Go" a gasp was heard from beside of Patton, making him jump and look at Roman in alarm. "What is it? Is something wrong?"

"Look outside!" Roman urged, pointing to Patton's window with wide eyes. Patton turned to the window, gasping just as Roman had as his eyes landed on the white flakes of snow that were slowly drifting down to the ground outside. "It's snowing for the first time this season!"

"It's beautiful," Patton said with a wide smile, admiring the snowflakes. "I hope it sticks. I love the snow."

"Me too," Roman agreed. "If it does we should go out there tomorrow. We could go sledding!"

"If it does," Patton reminded, not wanting either of them to get their hopes up to high to be disappointed. "But for now I think we should finish our Disney movie so you can get home for the night." Patton nudged Roman's shoulder with his own to get his attention back to the movie, smiling as Roman remembered the fact that he had missed the entire song "Let It Go." He rushed to reverse the movie so he could hear it again while Patton smiled next to him, thinking about how much fun it would be to go sledding with Roman.

Whoo, this ones finally done! I'll have to do more later, cause it's 6AM and I've stayed up to write this chapter lol, but I hope you liked it! Also, enjoy the very simple drawing I made to accompany this chapter with their mugs. I like it lol.

Anyways, sorry for being so bad about updating here, I promise I'm trying my best to stay caught up as I do plan to finish by Christmas still! I'm working as hard as I can, but Christmas time is busy y'know. So it's a bit hard. I hope you'll forgive me and enjoy the book even if I don't succeed in getting it all finished by Christmas, and thank you so much for reading! Take care of yourselves. Bye!-Bob