Gingerbread Disaster Area (Kevin/Joe)
The Jonas family always drew from a hat for Christmas duties, just so everyone had to do something to get ready for the holiday. Their dad was stringing the lights on the outside of the house. Their mom got overall cleaning duty. Nick and Frankie got the time-consuming task of decorating the inside of the house, and Joe and Kevin were stuck on baking duty.
That would have been unfortunate were it not for Kevin, who was actually pretty handy in the kitchen. Joe, however, could burn himself on an oven that wasn’t on.
Kevin was, at this point, completely frustrated. He’d decided it would be best for him to do most of the work and leave to Joe the things he couldn’t possibly mess up or hurt himself doing, like measuring milk or sugar or flour into cups, and spooning dollops of dough onto a cookie sheet, and icing the cookies (a task with which Joe proved Kevin’s judgment wrong; he burned his fingers on the cookie sheet by touching it before it had had sufficient time to cool).
The kitchen was a mess, but they had two dozen sugar cookies, a dozen chocolate crinkles, and three pumpkin pies to show for it. (They were hosting a big Christmas party this year.) They had saved their favorite task for last.
Kevin, when he was very young, loved watching his mother construct the gingerbread house. He wasn’t allowed to help until he turned four, at which point, he solemnly took on the responsibility of adding the icing. And, surprising everyone, he turned out to be naturally good at it, careful and artful, almost to the point of compulsiveness. There was no sign of the usual garish color-coordinating tendencies children seem to have.
Two years later, he inducted four-year-old Joe into his Gingerbread House Crew. He had high hopes for him, and was pleased with the idea of his little brother helping him create masterpieces.
However, as it turned out, Joe lacked Kevin’s finesse, and his first attempt turned into a rainbow of sticky, smeared icing. Kevin had been so outraged, he had uttered a few choice words no six-year-old should know, thus making Joe cry and getting himself sent to his room.
But, over the years, they’d developed a certain rhythm. It turned out that Joe’s hand was much steadier than Kevin’s, so Kevin came up with the designs, and added gum drops and various details, while Joe applied the icing.
It never caught on with Nick or Frankie. Nick always said it was because, by the time he was old enough, he’d watched Joe and Kevin do it so many times, he thought it was something nobody else should ever be allowed to do.
So, now, with the kitchen smelling like a mixture of chocolate and icing and that distinct warm scent of sugar cookies, they carefully placed the gingerbread house, which they’d sculpted and baked earlier, on the clean tabletop, a space they’d left deliberately open for just this task.
“Don’t know why we bother with the Christmas draw,” Joe was saying as they got situated, a sugar cookie shaped like a Christmas tree and coated in green frosting half-eaten in his hand. “Everyone knows we always end up doing the baking.”
“We?” Kevin reached up and swiped a glob of icing of his brother’s lip with his thumb. “I believe I did all the baking.”
Joe licked his lip subconsciously, pulling the bowl of white icing across the table toward him. “It’s a combined effort!” He said indignantly. “You know my icing rocks.” A few years prior, he’d thought it would be fun to have homemade icing, versus something that came from a tube. After a few botched attempts, he’d perfected it, and the whole family agreed that Joe’s was better than the prepackaged stuff.
“Whatever.” Kevin was deciding on how he wanted the colors to look. “Besides, it’s tradition, even if the drawing’s fixed.”
Joe stared at him. “It’s fixed? I thought it was coincidence we always get baking duty!”
Kevin laughed. “Every year for five years?”
Joe frowned, standing so he could figure out the best way to apply the “snow” to the roof of the house. “Well, maybe I still believe in the magic of Christmas.” He sniffed. “You’re just cynical.”
Kevin watched him with a careful eye as he began coating the thick icing over the roof with the back of a spoon. “I bet you still believe in Santa Claus too.”
“If by ‘Santa Claus’, you mean ‘Dad’, then yes.” Joe’s tongue poked out of the corner of his mouth as he sculpted little mounds of snow around the base of the house too. “We doing the basic red, green, white thing on this one?”
Kevin nodded, especially impressed with his brother’s precision. “Yeah, but with some flare.” He flashed him a grin. “We all know you’re good at that.”
Joe blinked at him, spoon poised in mid-air. “Wait. You’re going to let me design it?”
Kevin smiled. “Hey, you’re not a little kid anymore. You couldn’t possibly ruin it.”
Joe squealed. “Thank you!” He planted a wet kiss on Kevin’s cheek. “Now go away! I want it to be a surprise!”
Kevin laughed, wiping it off, even though he was pleased by the reaction. “I’ll leave you to it.”
Half an hour later, Kevin was sitting cross-legged on the couch, alternating watching A Charlie Brown Christmas and laughing at Nick and Frankie, who were struggling to string lights and garland along the mantel and around the windows.
Nick turned to scowl at him. “You could help, you know.”
Kevin shrugged, unwrapping a candy cane, eyes refocusing on Charlie Brown and his poor excuse for a Christmas tree. “Sorry, not my job this year.”
“Kev?” Joe leaned into the room, eyes lit up with excitement. “I’m done. Will you come look at it?”
Kevin nodded, candy cane stuck in his mouth like a lollipop, and unfolded himself from the couch, following his brother into the kitchen. Joe was standing beaming by the table. “Okay. Let’s see it.”
Joe stepped to the side, throwing his arm out in theatrical presentation. “Ta da!”
Kevin’s mouth fell open, then closed with a sharp click. He stared for a moment, then looked at his brother. “What the hell, Joe?”
The younger boy seemed taken aback. “What?” He studied his masterpiece. “What’s wrong with it?”
“It looks like a rainbow threw up on it!” Kevin cried, outraged. “Couldn’t keep it the least bit tasteful, could you?”
Joe’s face fell. “Hey, it’s not that bad.”
“No,” Kevin’s smile was a little too sarcastic. “At least it matches your clothes.”
That was when it started, because, really, if there’s a bowl of icing sitting on a table only a few inches from someone as angry as Joe was, it could only be assumed that it was going to be used as a weapon to its fullest extent.
So, really, the only person who wouldn’t have seen it coming was the victim, who was, in this case, Kevin. And, the look of shock when the icing was flung with a spoon at him, to stick in a goopy red mess to the front of his shirt, certainly spoke to that. “Joseph!” This was his favorite shirt!
Joe feigned innocence. “Oh, no need to thank me. We all know green’s not your color.”
Kevin growled, pulling the bowl of green toward him, grabbing his brother by his collar so he couldn’t run away and scooping a handful up and into his hair. “Well, it’s certainly yours.”
Joe shrieked, especially after the older boy made a point to smear it over his scalp. He wrenched out of his grasp, snatching up the red bowl, pelting Kevin as easily as if he were throwing snowballs.
Kevin ducked behind the table with his own bowl, his head appearing over the edge to launch a glob of icing at Joe whenever he paused.
If the kitchen had been a mess before, it was an absolute disaster now. It was lucky the cookies and pies already made were wrapped and tucked safely away in cabinets and the fridge, because barely an inch of surface in the room was left untouched by the sugary topping.
Prompted by the shouts and general sound of chaos, Nick peered around the corner into the kitchen, only to be hit from both sides with icing. He didn’t even seem surprised.
They both stood up, looking guilty. It only took Joe about a second to start laughing. His hair was almost completely coated in green icing, like that had been Kevin’s main target, and his formerly white t-shirt had almost artful splotches on it, looking vaguely intentional.
Kevin was in no better shape. He looked like he’d taken a bullet to the left side of his head, since it was dripping with red frosting. Nick wondered if he’d noticed the state of his shoes yet, since they were one of his favorite pairs.
He himself felt like a Christmas cookie. “I thought you guys were decorating gingerbread houses, not each other.”
Kevin was looking distastefully down at himself. Joe was still laughing. “Well, we did both.”
“Mom’s gonna kill you guys.”
That sobered Joe up. He shooed Nick away. “We have to clean!”
“Keep Frankie out of here; we don’t want to give him any ideas.” Kevin added, tossing Nick a dishtowel to wipe his face.
The younger boy nodded and disappeared. Joe’s giggling reignited as they broke out mops and towels. Kevin glowered at him. “If you hadn’t ruined the gingerbread house, we wouldn’t have to do this.”
“No, but,” Joe reached over and swiped icing of his brother’s cheek, sucking it happily from his finger, “this was a lot more fun.”
Kevin smiled despite himself, drawing Joe by his wrist into his arms. “The gingerbread house wasn’t that bad.” He admitted, chuckling when his hands slipped through the goopy frosting on the back of his brother’s shirt. He tilted his chin up with his index finger, kissing his mouth, smiling when Joe melted against him with a soft moan. “And, you taste good enough right now that it doesn’t matter anyway.”