Imagine my shock when my secret santa turned out to be Heero, the man who happened to be my partner, who I spent most of my time with at work, and who I would love to get to know more about...after hours. Now, it was just after work, and the beginning of our little holiday break. We'd been standing outside admiring the snow before he'd told me that he was the one who'd been sending me little anonymous presents.

Huh. No wonder. I'd been wondering just who in the world would think that a bright yellow yarn scarf would be a good idea for a gift.

It all made sense now.

"You...knit?" I mentally smacked myself for that one. Obviously the man did, he'd just handed me a scarf as my last gift, for god's sake. What was he going to say, 'no, I don't, I actually stole that from a neighborhood snowman'?

"No, I don't," Heero started.

I blinked. Did he seriously steal it from a neighborhood snowman?

"...at least, not very well." He shrugged. "It's all lopsided."

"That's okay, I'm sure the snowman won't mind," I blurted out.

Nice, Maxwell. If there had ever been a moment for me to have become a mute, that would've been it.

Unfortunately, my voice box did not agree.

"I mean, you know, snowmen -- they, uh, have scarves sometimes, and --"

"...You want to make a snowman?" Heero suggested, gesturing to the ground. "We might as well make use of all this snow."

"Right." I nodded firmly. "Exactly what I was thinking..." Except not, but I liked his idea of how my brain worked better than I liked the real deal. It was relieving to just trudge around for awhile in not-exactly-comfortable silence, rolling little balls of snow into big ones for our creation.

Heheh. Our snowman has big balls.

Anyway, avoidance seemed to be a key factor in our 'relationship,' and I was okay with that.

"Do you want to have a snowball fight?" I suddenly asked, as we'd been admiring our finished snowman in silence for just a bit too long. I watched as Heero blinked, surprised. I was, too. What happened to avoidance? To long, awkward pauses in-between conversation? I kind of liked those aspects of our friendship.

Heero smirked, raising an eyebrow. "Depends. What will you give me if I win?"

I snorted. "Right. I think the question is, what will you do for me when you lose?"

He shrugged, an unfamiliar smile tracing his mouth. "We'll see."

Heero trumped me by a mile.

I'd barely started patting the damn flakes together when he started pelting me. I don't know how he made all those snowballs in about three seconds flat, but after I surrendered to the freezing globs of snow that were inching their way down my coat and in my ear and all that good stuff -- Heero confessed that he'd been wanting to do that for a long time.

"Uh...do you hate me that much? You've been wanting to throw icy water down my shirt?" I asked, bewildered.

"No!" Heero laughed, and the sound of it made me smile. It was nice, hearing him laugh. He didn't usually do that at work, even though I knew he had a sense of humor. It was just hard to burst into giggles when Une was trying to debrief you on a life-or-death mission about extracting bombs out of a building or something.

"So...then what?"

He smiled at me again. If it meant putting a bucket of ice down my shirt just to see that expression on his face, I would take it.

"Since I won, I get to choose what I want for my prize, right?" Heero took a step towards me. I resisted the urge to back away.

"It was clearly more of a tie, but, uh, sure..." I fumbled with the words, trying to ignore the look in his eyes.

He took another step closer, and then another, until the poofiness of his jacket was pressed gently against mine. "What if I want you?"

I blinked. "Depends on what you're going to do with me."

Heero's smile widened, and he leaned in slowly, keeping his eyes on mine, and kissed me.

When we broke apart, we were lying on our sides, snow soaking through our clothes.

"Oh. Well," I said, trying to figure out what was going on. "In that case, I guess we can say you won."

Heero laughed, and I smiled.

It wasn't the best Christmas ever (that came a few years later, when Heero proposed) but it was pretty damn close.

And every year after that, we made snowmen right before having a snowball fight. I won't tell you what we did after that, but...

It made up for all the crappy Christmas gifts he'd been giving me as my secret santa -- oh boy, did it ever.