"Oh, you know men," Velma spoke up from the counter, her voice laced with joking sarcasm. "They have to stake out their territory. Been doing it since the beginning of time."

"Maybe so," Daphne assented, her voice lilting with an upcoming tease. "But that hasn’t stopped you from staring out that window for the whole afternoon."

"I have not!" her friend defended, sounding scandalized.

"Velma, you’ve been stirring that same batter for the past half-hour."

Velma immediately looked down at the bowl she held—a bowl full of extremely well-mixed gingerbread batter. "Okay, so they look cute while they’re staking out their territory." Daphne giggled, and Velma looked over at her. "And I don’t think you’ve made so much progress, either," she retorted, noticing that the redhead had only cut out about one sheet of cookies.

"Guilty," laughed Daphne, punching out a star shape with a cookie cutter.

Velma’s eyes again drifted to the window, where she had a clear view of the three men playing out in the cold air. They were laughing-- their breath puffs of steam-- and playing what looked like a very disorganized game. Ethan had the ball, but a moment later he was playfully shoved into the snow-covered grass by Freddy. Shaggy, unable to stop as he ran towards them, toppled Fred. Velma smiled and shook her head. Boys will be boys, she thought to herself, amused by their youthful antics. To tell the truth, she was surprised to see Ethan out there, for he wasn’t into sports at all. He’d told her once, a few months into their relationship, that it was due to the fact he’d been teased so much about his lack of athletic ability when he was younger. Of course she hadn’t told Daphne this, when they’d first watched the guys go out, and not because she didn’t trust her friend with the information. It was just that it was such an incredibly personal and private thing he’d shared with her, and one that she couldn’t imagine would be easy to admit. Ethan was very comfortable with himself and his abilities, especially for a man so young as he was, but she still knew that many men wouldn’t have wanted to talk about such a thing—especially considering the emphasis placed on being good at sports.

"Oh, look, I think they’re getting ready to come in," Daphne observed. "They’re picking up their coats and stuff." The men had gone out dressed for the weather, but midway into their game they’d shed their coats, warmed by body heat as the game intensified. "Do you think they’ll want some cider?"

Velma glanced over to the pot of simmering beverage on the stovetop, which was giving off an incredibly inviting and savory aroma as the spices within it steeped. "I don’t know," she thought aloud. "I’m not sure if they’ll be hot or cold!"

Despite the uncertainty, Daphne began ladling some of the hot drink into mugs, just as the three guys came tramping in the door, stopping first to stomp powdered snow off their shoes and brush it from their sweatshirts and pants. All three pulled warm knit caps from their heads and re-arranged their disheveled hair—or Ethan and Freddy did. Their faces were flushed and glowing from their exercise and the chill winter air, and when the girls moved close to them to hand out the drinks, they could feel heat practically radiating from their bodies. Scooby arrived in the door at their heels, having first given himself a good shake to fling off some loose snow from his fur.

"Who won?" Daphne asked, giving Fred a steaming mug. "Was it a good game?"

"We didn’t keep score," Fred answered, surprising Daph. Usually he was very competitive. "I’d say we were just about even-- I might have been ahead a little," he couldn’t resist adding. He’d actually been quite a bit ahead, but neither of the other men corrected him. Both Shaggy and Ethan had definitely held their own, though.

"Here, Scooby," Daphne addressed the dog, placing a big bowl of cider on the floor within his reach. Three seconds later, the bowl was drained in one massive slurp.

Ethan, like Fred and Shaggy, gratefully and happily downed his drink, gulping it as if it were water. As he moved toward the stove in the now-crowded kitchen, hoping for a refill, he couldn’t resist reaching out and laying one of his cold hands along the back of his girlfriend’s neck, just below her hair and above the line of her sweater. Despite the fact that his body felt furnace-hot inside, his skin, tingling with the change in temperature, bore evidence of the freezing temperatures outside.

Velma let out a surprised yelp at the flash of shocking cold on her skin, and spun immediately to face the perpetrator. He bit back a laugh, looking at the ceiling and doing his best impersonation of innocence. It didn’t work.

"Eth—annn!" she exclaimed, trying to look put-out. It really didn’t go over any better than his feigned innocence, and she knew it. "Your hand is freezing," she informed him needlessly.

"A kiss would warm me up," he told her, his voice smooth and low so that only she could hear his request. Velma suddenly felt as if she’d swallowed down a little of the hot cider herself. Her eyes darted quickly about the room, noticing that everyone seemed fairly occupied with hanging up coats and ladling out more cider. Though she had loosened up considerably due to her relationship with Ethan, she still really wasn’t much for public affection. All eyes more or less diverted, she stretched up to fulfill Ethan’s request. The spicy-sweetness of the cider clung to his lips, and she stayed there a little longer than she’d planned. "Very nice," he said softly when she pulled away. Noticing that she seemed effected, he continued. "Well, you know, I’ve got this whole masculine thing going here." She cocked her head, trying to read his meaning. "I mean, hey, check it out—I’m even sweating."

"And that’s noteworthy why...?" Velma asked, her mouth tipping.

"Ah, I don’t know," Ethan said, straightening up and putting his hands on his hips with a jaunty air. "It’s not something I do very much." This was a half truth, for Ethan actually did do that fairly often—in a non-sports, on-stage context. Nonetheless, he continued, if only to get a reaction from his skeptical-looking girlfriend. "It feels... strong, manly—primal." He was hamming it up to the extreme, tossing his chin up into the air and preening.

"Primal, eh?" she questioned, eyebrows raising in joking fun. "Jinkies, what are you going to do next, throw me over your shoulder and carry me back to your cave?"

The spectators to the little scene had long since started laughing, and started up even harder as Ethan crouched down a little, resting his hands on his knees and aiming a "menacing" growl in Velma’s direction. After seven months of Ethan and Velma being together, their friends were plenty used to seeing the two of them play around like this.

"Men!" Velma finally bantered at him, out of anything else to say.

It was Fred’s turn to tease. "Oh, come on Velms, you know you like it," he joked, reaching out and tugging the ends of her short hair before turning to the other two participants of the basketball game. "If you guys wanna take showers now I can get some towels and stuff. Unless you don’t want to loose that primal feeling," he aimed at Ethan, bringing more laughs.

"Like, yeah man," Shaggy replied at once, showing an uncharacteristic enthusiasm for bathing. "I gotta go get Mary Jane at the station soon!"

"I’ll take you up on that, too," Ethan agreed, sorry to leave off teasing Velma while he was ahead, but badly wanting to clean up as well, primal or no.

"Shaggy, you know where the upstairs bathroom is, right?" Fred addressed his other friend, who was trying to weasel some cookie dough from Daphne’s bowl. He paused to nod an affirmative answer. "There’s lots of towels in the right-hand cupboard under the sink, and there should be shampoo and fresh soap already in the shower."

"Thanks, Fred," Shag answered, heading out of the kitchen, casting one last wistful glance at the cookie dough.

"Eth, you can have the downstairs. C’mon, I’ll show you where it is." The obligatory arrangements having been made, Freddy led Ethan through the large house to the downstairs bathroom, pausing to pull a fresh towel from a hallway linen closet. "This is a really great place," Ethan commented, looking over Fred’s new house for the first time. The other man had purchased it only about a month before, and the gang was spending Christmas Eve and Christmas there as a kind of housewarming. Located in one of Coolsville’s nicest neighborhoods, it was large but modestly so, though Fred could have perhaps afforded a ritzier place. His reward money for solving the Spooky Island case, plus tons of royalties for television appearances and interviews, had boosted the already well-off Fred into a new financial bracket. "It’s really big, too—and your first house and everything."

"Well, I wanted to have enough room for me and Daph," Fred explained quietly. "And well, you know, we might have kids." Freddy smiled, and Ethan could tell immediately that Fred would be very happy with that prospect. It was funny—when Ethan had first met him he didn’t seem much like a guy who would be interested in marriage, much less having children. He acted just about like the consummate bachelor—his time in an actual relationship with Daphne had changed him in that way. "I mean, if she says yes..."

"I’m sure she will, man," Ethan assured him, a little perplexed by the return of Fred’s less-than-confident behavior. After all, he and Daphne were pretty much a canon-couple. Did he really think she might turn him down? "You’ve prob’ly already talked about it... right?"

"Yeah," Fred replied. "We’ve talked about it a lot."

"See, no problem." Ethan laughed with a new thought. "You know, I’ll bet you she already knows you’re gonna do it. Women have some kind of radar about that or something..." The younger man trailed off as he realized that Fred seemed lost in thought.

"I don’t know, Eth," Fred said a moment later from his almost-daze. "It’s like—well, I’ve just kinda always known I would marry Daphne someday. It’s not like I have cold feet or anything like that. It’s just finally, really asking. You know?" Ethan nodded, trying to understand what his friend was trying to explain, even though he really hadn’t experienced such a situation himself. "Just wait ‘till it’s your turn, pal. You’ll know exactly what I’m saying." This thought seemed to cheer Fred, and he smiled and continued. "Now there’s an intimidating situation—proposing to Velma! Whoa, think about that!" Laughing a bit, Fred turned to go, leaving Ethan to his shower. Alone in the hallway, Ethan spoke again, softly.

"I think about it all the time."

On to Part 3

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