Butter Pecan 9, Red Currant 2
Author: Marina
Story: The Dragon World
Challenge: Butter Pecan 9 (bitter), Red Currant 2 (heat wave)
Toppings/Extras: Caramel, Malt (Potluck prompt from Sara: "I don't believe an accident of birth makes people sisters or brothers. It makes them siblings, gives them mutuality of parentage. Sisterhood and brotherhood is a condition people have to work at."), Peaches (It shows your intuition and optimism running high. Use this to your advantage)
Word Count: 2,181
Rating: PG-13 (for angry twins)
Summary: Kevin fights to overcome strained relations at home.
Notes: Miyabi’s wonderful Of Shakespeare and Salads ended with Kevin learning to cook, and I liked the idea so much that it’s canon now, only he teaches himself and a lot later than he would have learned from Yuyan. (Also, I’m writing this in between batches of red velvet cupcakes. Delicious inspiration!)
“Kevin! Kevin!”
Kevin turned to see Laura trying to push her way through the crowd to him, and automatically smiled. “Hey, short stuff,” he called.
Laura poked him as she caught up and fell into step with him. “I hate you sometimes,” she said.
“I know. How have I not seen you all day?”
“I was busy.” She indicated the guitar case in her hand. “Sorry. Where are you off to now?”
“Chemistry. Blech.” He pulled an overly dramatic face for her benefit. “You’re done after fifth, right? You going home?”
She shook her head. “No, store first. It’s my night to cook tonight and I need to buy the ingredients. Then I need to pick Chase up at the middle school.”
“Hold on.” Kevin took her by the elbow to stop her. “Are you seriously telling me,” he said, “that you’re cooking dinner for your whole family, from scratch, on a weeknight?”
“Three nights a week, actually,” Laura said, with a puzzled smile. “It helps my parents out a lot. Chase does at least one dinner a week, too. I thought you knew that.”
“No, I didn’t.”
“Huh.” She continued walking, and Kevin strode after her, easily catching up with his longer steps. “No, I’ve been cooking since I was twelveish, right around when my parents decided I was old enough to watch Chase by myself over the summer and after school. I don’t make, like, elaborate four-course meals or anything, and a lot of the time it’s really simple stuff that takes ten minutes. It’s nice to know how, though.”
“Right, I knew you did cook, I just didn’t think it was that much,” he murmured, turning the new knowledge over in his mind.
They reached the entrance to the science building, where Laura usually took a left to the student parking lot. “I’ll see you…” she began, turning that way, but stopped when she saw the somber look on his face. “You okay?”
“Yeah, fine, just tired.” He did his best to pass it off with a grin. “Home is…weird right now.” An understatement, but still true. “But it’s okay. I’ll be fine after finals.” That, he doubted. Home for the MacLeods was a special kind of hell, and had been since before his parents’ divorce the previous summer.
Kevin and his sisters had hoped that the divorce would end their misery, but instead, it had merely become a quieter kind of unbearable. His parents’ constant fights had been replaced by tense silences, uncomfortable questions, and passive-aggressive behavior. None of the kids liked staying with either parent, and Lindsey in particular had begun making frequent excuses to be away from home as much as possible. Kevin didn’t particularly blame her for that, but Sidney did not have the same means of escape, so by extension, he didn’t either. That unsettled him.
The look on Laura’s face showed him that she wasn’t convinced. Kevin wasn’t particularly surprised by that. She could read him better than almost anyone, and he hadn’t tried as hard as he could have to look fine. “What are you doing tonight?”
“Just studying.”
“Come over for dinner first. Bring Sidney and Lindsey if they want to come. No, really,” she said quickly, holding up a hand to cut off his protest. “It’s no trouble to make everything a little bigger, and actually, even less trouble tonight because I was planning a ‘breakfast for dinner.’ Come on. You know you want to.”
Kevin couldn’t stop his mouth from widening to a rueful smile. “All right, all right. I’ll be there unless something comes up.”
“Good.” She backed away, pointing two fingers first toward her eyes, then his. “Six o’clock, and don’t forget, I can tell when you’re pulling shenanigans.”
“You can say ‘bullshit,’ Laura, we’re not in preschool anymore,” he called after her, and laughed when she wrinkled her nose in response.
***
Except for infrequent trips to restaurants, Laura’s dinner was one of the best Kevin had had since moving to California. She made an egg-and-sausage casserole topped with bread slices and cornflakes, and a cinnamon swirl coffee cake. With it, they ate halved grapefruits and drank coffee or hot chocolate, as the consumer preferred. “This-is-amazing,” Lindsey enthused, as she scraped up the last of her casserole and leaned over to serve herself another scoop. “Laura, you’re fantastic. Thank you so much.”
Laura chuckled. “You’re welcome. There’s a lot left, do you want to take some of it home?”
“Um, yes.”
Mrs. Mitchell lent them containers and helped the MacLeods pack up enough to set aside for their mother and the next day’s dinner. Kevin contemplated the plastic boxes as they walked back to the car. Laura had said that her family dinners weren’t elaborate, but her definition differed from his. He could not imagine the preparation that must have gone into making it.
Yet the Mitchells were obviously contented, and happy to spend time together. Laura and her parents had kept up friendly conversation throughout dinner, and even Chase had managed to toss a few comments across the room despite being stuck at the island counter with Sidney. With a family as busy as they were, that took work.
“Can I drive?” Lindsey asked, startling him. “Actually, can I just drop you and Sid at the house and take the car? I want to go to the library to study.”
He blinked. “Since when do you need to go to the library for that?”
“Since…now?” She made an impatient face in response to his raised eyebrows. “I really do want to go the library, Kevin, God. Finals are going to be brutal and I’m not going to get anything done at home.”
Kevin put the boxes on top of the car and opened the back door for Sidney, mulling that over. He felt strongly tempted to just agree, even though he didn’t like it. Then he happened to look down and caught Sidney’s face as she slid into her seat; a perfect reflection of his own dissatisfaction.
“Actually,” he said, “I need to go to the store.”
It wasn’t until he had dropped a grumbling Lindsey off at the library and parked in the Ralph’s lot that he realized the flaw in his plan: he did not actually know how to cook anything. Acknowledging that simply made him square his shoulders and get out of the car before he thought better of it. He would figure it out if it killed him.
“Are we out of frozen dinners?” Sidney asked, trotting along beside him.
“No,” said Kevin, “but if I never eat one of those again, I’ll die happy. I thought maybe we could make something. Is there a dinner you’d like to have?”
“Mac and cheese?” she asked hopefully.
Something simple, thank God. Mac and cheese came in boxes, with directions, and couldn’t be too hard to put together. “Sure. Do you want to push the cart?”
***
Kevin surveyed the kitchen counter with pride and satisfaction. Boxed mac and cheese and a bowl of carrot sticks did not make as appetizing a sight as Laura’s cooking, but it was edible, and had not come out of the microwave.
“What possessed you to start cooking all of a sudden?” his mother asked, from the doorway.
“I’m tired of frozen dinners,” he said with a shrug.
She smiled a little. “So am I. This is nice. Feel free to make dinner again whenever you want and I’ll pay for the groceries.”
Kevin grinned. “Okay. Uh, can you set the table? I don’t know what goes where.”
“Going out, taking the car!” Lindsey called from the other room.
Their mother opened the silverware drawer and began counting out forks. “Not until after dinner!”
“I’ll get my own!”
“No, you won’t. Your brother was kind enough to make food for all of us, and we’re all going to eat it together like civilized people.”
Kevin picked up the pan of mac and cheese and carried it out to the living room. As he set it on the trivet he had found in one of the cupboards, he looked Lindsey’s way in time to see her fling her backpack and softball gear on the couch in irritation.
At the table, she wolfed down her bowl and a handful of carrot sticks in three minutes, refused seconds-a big surprise-and asked to be excused. “Sit and talk for a while,” said their mother, eyeing her. “Why are you in such a hurry?”
“I want to go to the batting range and it closes at six-thirty,” Lindsey protested.
“Five more minutes won’t hurt you.”
Five minutes became ten while Sidney talked about the birthday party she’d been invited to, their mother told an amusing work story, and Kevin mentioned finals while surreptitiously glancing at the seething Lindsey. “We have half-days next week for them,” he explained.
“Are you two going to be okay?” asked their mother.
“I just need to study,” said Lindsey, through gritted teeth, “which I was going to do tonight, at the library, after I hit a couple rounds at the batting range, can I go now?” She barely waited for permission before jumping up and bolting for the door.
“May I be excused?” Sidney asked, in a small voice, after several seconds of silence.
“Yes, you may.”
She hurriedly got up to clear her place, leaving Kevin and their mother alone at the table. He had no idea what to say, with just the two of them, but luckily for him she soon finished and rose as well. “Thank you, Kevin, I appreciate this,” she said quietly, leaning down and kissing him on the forehead.
He frowned darkly into his bowl.
***
After finals, he tried again-this time with a hot dog bar and salad. “This again?” Lindsey scoffed, when she saw him setting up the condiments.
Kevin turned on her. “What is wrong with you?” he demanded. “Normal people say thank you when their brothers make them food.”
“The last thing I want to do right now is sit down at the table with Mom and make small talk about stupid shit and pretend we’re a happy family when we’re not! I have plans!”
“Fuck your plans!” All the irritation he had been feeling bubbled to the surface, giving him the angry energy he needed to confront her. “I’m sick of this! I’m sick of us avoiding each other and I’m sick of…hating being at home, and I’m sick of eating fucking frozen food. So I’m doing something about it. The least you could do is not be such a goddamn brat about it!”
Lindsey looked stunned, and Kevin realized exactly how many foul words he had just launched at her, and how loud he had yelled them. The latter bothered him more. He had certainly done his fair share of shouting with people he cared about less, particularly in the dragon world, but never to Lindsey. He’d always managed to restrain himself somehow. “Look-"
“Shut up,” she said. “It’s your own damn fault that things are like this. If you hadn’t disappeared, if you hadn’t-" She stopped, swallowed. “Mom and Dad wouldn’t have started fighting so much if that hadn’t happened and they wouldn’t be divorced and everything would be fine.”
Kevin glared at her. “I didn’t ask to…disappear, okay, that’s not the kind of thing people just do for shits and giggles.”
“But you let Sid walk across the street by herself!” she shot back.
He could tell she regretted saying it immediately, but he didn’t care. “Why the hell would you even say that to me?” he exclaimed. He felt guilty even remembering Sidney’s awful accident, and the familiar feeling of cold dread rushed through his veins once again. “Forget it. I don’t want to eat dinner with you. You can go do whatever the fuck you want and I hope you’re happy.”
Lindsey stared him down for several seconds, and then stomped out of the kitchen.
Kevin leaned back against the refrigerator and covered his face in his hands. His second attempt had bombed before it even got off the ground, and it was his fault for yelling at his twin. She had deserved every word, but he still didn’t feel good about it.
More heavy footfall in the living room broke him out of his trance. Lindsey had gathered her things and was heading for the front door. Kevin’s guilt got the better of him, and he quickly snatched up a hot dog, squirted a little ketchup on it, and ran after her. “Lindsey!” he yelled, just as she was getting in the car.
“What?” she snapped.
He skidded to a halt next to the driver’s door and offered the hot dog. “At least take this with you,” he said, “so you don’t have to buy fast food.”
She rolled her eyes, but accepted it. “Whatever, Mr. Mom.”
Not perfect. Not even close to what he wanted. Kevin nodded and backed away. For now, that would have to do.
Story: The Dragon World
Challenge: Butter Pecan 9 (bitter), Red Currant 2 (heat wave)
Toppings/Extras: Caramel, Malt (Potluck prompt from Sara: "I don't believe an accident of birth makes people sisters or brothers. It makes them siblings, gives them mutuality of parentage. Sisterhood and brotherhood is a condition people have to work at."), Peaches (It shows your intuition and optimism running high. Use this to your advantage)
Word Count: 2,181
Rating: PG-13 (for angry twins)
Summary: Kevin fights to overcome strained relations at home.
Notes: Miyabi’s wonderful Of Shakespeare and Salads ended with Kevin learning to cook, and I liked the idea so much that it’s canon now, only he teaches himself and a lot later than he would have learned from Yuyan. (Also, I’m writing this in between batches of red velvet cupcakes. Delicious inspiration!)
“Kevin! Kevin!”
Kevin turned to see Laura trying to push her way through the crowd to him, and automatically smiled. “Hey, short stuff,” he called.
Laura poked him as she caught up and fell into step with him. “I hate you sometimes,” she said.
“I know. How have I not seen you all day?”
“I was busy.” She indicated the guitar case in her hand. “Sorry. Where are you off to now?”
“Chemistry. Blech.” He pulled an overly dramatic face for her benefit. “You’re done after fifth, right? You going home?”
She shook her head. “No, store first. It’s my night to cook tonight and I need to buy the ingredients. Then I need to pick Chase up at the middle school.”
“Hold on.” Kevin took her by the elbow to stop her. “Are you seriously telling me,” he said, “that you’re cooking dinner for your whole family, from scratch, on a weeknight?”
“Three nights a week, actually,” Laura said, with a puzzled smile. “It helps my parents out a lot. Chase does at least one dinner a week, too. I thought you knew that.”
“No, I didn’t.”
“Huh.” She continued walking, and Kevin strode after her, easily catching up with his longer steps. “No, I’ve been cooking since I was twelveish, right around when my parents decided I was old enough to watch Chase by myself over the summer and after school. I don’t make, like, elaborate four-course meals or anything, and a lot of the time it’s really simple stuff that takes ten minutes. It’s nice to know how, though.”
“Right, I knew you did cook, I just didn’t think it was that much,” he murmured, turning the new knowledge over in his mind.
They reached the entrance to the science building, where Laura usually took a left to the student parking lot. “I’ll see you…” she began, turning that way, but stopped when she saw the somber look on his face. “You okay?”
“Yeah, fine, just tired.” He did his best to pass it off with a grin. “Home is…weird right now.” An understatement, but still true. “But it’s okay. I’ll be fine after finals.” That, he doubted. Home for the MacLeods was a special kind of hell, and had been since before his parents’ divorce the previous summer.
Kevin and his sisters had hoped that the divorce would end their misery, but instead, it had merely become a quieter kind of unbearable. His parents’ constant fights had been replaced by tense silences, uncomfortable questions, and passive-aggressive behavior. None of the kids liked staying with either parent, and Lindsey in particular had begun making frequent excuses to be away from home as much as possible. Kevin didn’t particularly blame her for that, but Sidney did not have the same means of escape, so by extension, he didn’t either. That unsettled him.
The look on Laura’s face showed him that she wasn’t convinced. Kevin wasn’t particularly surprised by that. She could read him better than almost anyone, and he hadn’t tried as hard as he could have to look fine. “What are you doing tonight?”
“Just studying.”
“Come over for dinner first. Bring Sidney and Lindsey if they want to come. No, really,” she said quickly, holding up a hand to cut off his protest. “It’s no trouble to make everything a little bigger, and actually, even less trouble tonight because I was planning a ‘breakfast for dinner.’ Come on. You know you want to.”
Kevin couldn’t stop his mouth from widening to a rueful smile. “All right, all right. I’ll be there unless something comes up.”
“Good.” She backed away, pointing two fingers first toward her eyes, then his. “Six o’clock, and don’t forget, I can tell when you’re pulling shenanigans.”
“You can say ‘bullshit,’ Laura, we’re not in preschool anymore,” he called after her, and laughed when she wrinkled her nose in response.
***
Except for infrequent trips to restaurants, Laura’s dinner was one of the best Kevin had had since moving to California. She made an egg-and-sausage casserole topped with bread slices and cornflakes, and a cinnamon swirl coffee cake. With it, they ate halved grapefruits and drank coffee or hot chocolate, as the consumer preferred. “This-is-amazing,” Lindsey enthused, as she scraped up the last of her casserole and leaned over to serve herself another scoop. “Laura, you’re fantastic. Thank you so much.”
Laura chuckled. “You’re welcome. There’s a lot left, do you want to take some of it home?”
“Um, yes.”
Mrs. Mitchell lent them containers and helped the MacLeods pack up enough to set aside for their mother and the next day’s dinner. Kevin contemplated the plastic boxes as they walked back to the car. Laura had said that her family dinners weren’t elaborate, but her definition differed from his. He could not imagine the preparation that must have gone into making it.
Yet the Mitchells were obviously contented, and happy to spend time together. Laura and her parents had kept up friendly conversation throughout dinner, and even Chase had managed to toss a few comments across the room despite being stuck at the island counter with Sidney. With a family as busy as they were, that took work.
“Can I drive?” Lindsey asked, startling him. “Actually, can I just drop you and Sid at the house and take the car? I want to go to the library to study.”
He blinked. “Since when do you need to go to the library for that?”
“Since…now?” She made an impatient face in response to his raised eyebrows. “I really do want to go the library, Kevin, God. Finals are going to be brutal and I’m not going to get anything done at home.”
Kevin put the boxes on top of the car and opened the back door for Sidney, mulling that over. He felt strongly tempted to just agree, even though he didn’t like it. Then he happened to look down and caught Sidney’s face as she slid into her seat; a perfect reflection of his own dissatisfaction.
“Actually,” he said, “I need to go to the store.”
It wasn’t until he had dropped a grumbling Lindsey off at the library and parked in the Ralph’s lot that he realized the flaw in his plan: he did not actually know how to cook anything. Acknowledging that simply made him square his shoulders and get out of the car before he thought better of it. He would figure it out if it killed him.
“Are we out of frozen dinners?” Sidney asked, trotting along beside him.
“No,” said Kevin, “but if I never eat one of those again, I’ll die happy. I thought maybe we could make something. Is there a dinner you’d like to have?”
“Mac and cheese?” she asked hopefully.
Something simple, thank God. Mac and cheese came in boxes, with directions, and couldn’t be too hard to put together. “Sure. Do you want to push the cart?”
***
Kevin surveyed the kitchen counter with pride and satisfaction. Boxed mac and cheese and a bowl of carrot sticks did not make as appetizing a sight as Laura’s cooking, but it was edible, and had not come out of the microwave.
“What possessed you to start cooking all of a sudden?” his mother asked, from the doorway.
“I’m tired of frozen dinners,” he said with a shrug.
She smiled a little. “So am I. This is nice. Feel free to make dinner again whenever you want and I’ll pay for the groceries.”
Kevin grinned. “Okay. Uh, can you set the table? I don’t know what goes where.”
“Going out, taking the car!” Lindsey called from the other room.
Their mother opened the silverware drawer and began counting out forks. “Not until after dinner!”
“I’ll get my own!”
“No, you won’t. Your brother was kind enough to make food for all of us, and we’re all going to eat it together like civilized people.”
Kevin picked up the pan of mac and cheese and carried it out to the living room. As he set it on the trivet he had found in one of the cupboards, he looked Lindsey’s way in time to see her fling her backpack and softball gear on the couch in irritation.
At the table, she wolfed down her bowl and a handful of carrot sticks in three minutes, refused seconds-a big surprise-and asked to be excused. “Sit and talk for a while,” said their mother, eyeing her. “Why are you in such a hurry?”
“I want to go to the batting range and it closes at six-thirty,” Lindsey protested.
“Five more minutes won’t hurt you.”
Five minutes became ten while Sidney talked about the birthday party she’d been invited to, their mother told an amusing work story, and Kevin mentioned finals while surreptitiously glancing at the seething Lindsey. “We have half-days next week for them,” he explained.
“Are you two going to be okay?” asked their mother.
“I just need to study,” said Lindsey, through gritted teeth, “which I was going to do tonight, at the library, after I hit a couple rounds at the batting range, can I go now?” She barely waited for permission before jumping up and bolting for the door.
“May I be excused?” Sidney asked, in a small voice, after several seconds of silence.
“Yes, you may.”
She hurriedly got up to clear her place, leaving Kevin and their mother alone at the table. He had no idea what to say, with just the two of them, but luckily for him she soon finished and rose as well. “Thank you, Kevin, I appreciate this,” she said quietly, leaning down and kissing him on the forehead.
He frowned darkly into his bowl.
***
After finals, he tried again-this time with a hot dog bar and salad. “This again?” Lindsey scoffed, when she saw him setting up the condiments.
Kevin turned on her. “What is wrong with you?” he demanded. “Normal people say thank you when their brothers make them food.”
“The last thing I want to do right now is sit down at the table with Mom and make small talk about stupid shit and pretend we’re a happy family when we’re not! I have plans!”
“Fuck your plans!” All the irritation he had been feeling bubbled to the surface, giving him the angry energy he needed to confront her. “I’m sick of this! I’m sick of us avoiding each other and I’m sick of…hating being at home, and I’m sick of eating fucking frozen food. So I’m doing something about it. The least you could do is not be such a goddamn brat about it!”
Lindsey looked stunned, and Kevin realized exactly how many foul words he had just launched at her, and how loud he had yelled them. The latter bothered him more. He had certainly done his fair share of shouting with people he cared about less, particularly in the dragon world, but never to Lindsey. He’d always managed to restrain himself somehow. “Look-"
“Shut up,” she said. “It’s your own damn fault that things are like this. If you hadn’t disappeared, if you hadn’t-" She stopped, swallowed. “Mom and Dad wouldn’t have started fighting so much if that hadn’t happened and they wouldn’t be divorced and everything would be fine.”
Kevin glared at her. “I didn’t ask to…disappear, okay, that’s not the kind of thing people just do for shits and giggles.”
“But you let Sid walk across the street by herself!” she shot back.
He could tell she regretted saying it immediately, but he didn’t care. “Why the hell would you even say that to me?” he exclaimed. He felt guilty even remembering Sidney’s awful accident, and the familiar feeling of cold dread rushed through his veins once again. “Forget it. I don’t want to eat dinner with you. You can go do whatever the fuck you want and I hope you’re happy.”
Lindsey stared him down for several seconds, and then stomped out of the kitchen.
Kevin leaned back against the refrigerator and covered his face in his hands. His second attempt had bombed before it even got off the ground, and it was his fault for yelling at his twin. She had deserved every word, but he still didn’t feel good about it.
More heavy footfall in the living room broke him out of his trance. Lindsey had gathered her things and was heading for the front door. Kevin’s guilt got the better of him, and he quickly snatched up a hot dog, squirted a little ketchup on it, and ran after her. “Lindsey!” he yelled, just as she was getting in the car.
“What?” she snapped.
He skidded to a halt next to the driver’s door and offered the hot dog. “At least take this with you,” he said, “so you don’t have to buy fast food.”
She rolled her eyes, but accepted it. “Whatever, Mr. Mom.”
Not perfect. Not even close to what he wanted. Kevin nodded and backed away. For now, that would have to do.