X-Men -- Cinnamon Sweet [Kitty/Peter]
Title: Cinnamon Sweet
Author: Mariusgirl
Fandom: X-Men (Movieverse)
Characters: Kitty/Peter
Prompt: #35 - Voice
Word Count: 2,828
Rating: PG
Summary: It's the small things in life that make all the difference in the world.
Disclaimer: I own nothing.
Additional Notes: Unbeta'd and unashamed fluff.
Two weeks after the funeral and Peter still had trouble sleeping. His overtaxed mind ran rampant with convoluted anxiety and fear. He spent his restless nights tossing and turning before nodding off shortly before dawn, only to gain a few hours of sleep. His body, sleep deprived and exhausted, made him feel like death warmed over in the early morning hours.
He knew that he should leave the intricacies of running the Xavier Institute to those mutants more qualified than him, but he couldn’t help but spot the gapping deficiencies and minor bumps that served to slow down the education process. The school was now in the capable hands of Storm, but Peter refused to become complacent in his vigilant act of looking over the younger kids and ensuring that no harm befell the still shell-shocked school.
As an ardent member of the X-Men and a student at the Institute, he felt that it was his duty to worry about its safety and what roadblocks that the future might hold in store. Since the death of the Professor, by one of their own, his own personal illusions about what was right and what was wrong had been shaken to their very foundations. That wasn’t to say that he was beginning to question his moral compass, but he was beginning to question the world around him with more ferocity than ever before.
Dark memories of the night William Stryker attacked the school still clung to his dreams, stashed away in some dark catacomb within his mind. He remembered with striking clarity the horror and fear that had permeated the halls on that dreadful night. The terror in the eyes of the smaller children as they fled from the save haven that was their home, straight out into the harsh unforgiving world that loathed everything about them, was enough to send shivers of fear and hatred up and down his spine. Everything that he had come to believe about his world and the shelter that the school provided had crumbled down around him as he ran barefoot through the cold dark night carrying an unconscious girl and whispering, pleading, with the other children to be quite. It was a dark angry gash seared upon an otherwise naïve young heart.
And it had changed everything.
Peter was no longer able to look at the world and see it in quite the same light. He had progressed from a stage of innocence by entering the world of experience through means of sheer panic. The world was a dark place, full of monsters in every shape and color. From the smooth talking and debonair to the blatantly grotesque and macabre, monsters lurked in every realm of society just waiting to reach out and ensnare the unsuspecting victim. It was a lesson that had jarred Peter into action.
He took it upon himself to guarantee the safety of those smaller than he, and his first move had been to join the X-Men. In his mind, the rest was history.
But “the rest” was what kept him up at night and brought him full circle with his current demons: the security of the school now that the Professor was no longer its stanch defender. The other members of the X-Men got by on sheer force of power alone. Except for Storm, she was smart, but she wasn’t as refined and experienced as the Professor or Jean had been. And, as such, she was in over her head when it came down to the political workings of the school and its image in the bloodthirsty media.
Peter was at a loss when it came to helping out on that front. He was reticent and soft-spoken, often dubbed the gentle giant by his peers. So he degraded himself to more menial tasks such as taking up the training of the younger generation of potential X-Men. It wasn’t much, and it was far from enough, but in some small way it was helping out.
One less thing that Storm had to worry about, instead it weight heavily on his mind. And once his mind started reeling with such thoughts he knew that sleep would evade him. But he had long since learned that a warm glass of milk would often soothe his troubled soul and help him relax.
He threw off the covers and sat up in the darkness. The chill in his room swept across his bare chest and left billions of tiny goose bumps on his pale flesh. Shivering, he groped around in the dark for his jacket, stubbing his toe on the leg of his desk chair in the process. A small string of curses flew under his breath as he located a t-shirt and pulled it over his head. No longer caring about finding his jacket, he made his way to the door and gently pulled it open. He stuck his head out just far enough to peer up and down the hall and, when he was satisfied that he was alone, he ducked out into the corridor and made a beeline for the staircase.
A few of the steps creaked ominously as he trod quickly down them, but he paid them no attention. His mind was still stuck back in his room and the gloomy thoughts, and it wasn’t until he was nearly upon the kitchen that he realized the light was on. He slowed his pace and came to a stop two doors down.
Inside the kitchen, he could distinctly hear a girl humming unashamedly. The mouthwatering aroma of sugar cookies and cinnamon wafted through the open door and drifted tantalizingly around him, mingling with the gentle voice and beckoning him onward.
He found himself taking an unconscious step forward as his feet moved of their own accord. A few more steps and he was practically on the threshold.
The gentle voice that fell on his ears was as welcomed as a spring rain. The girl, oblivious to his presence, had graduated from merely humming the tune to full fledged singing. Her voice seemed heaven sent and extraordinarily familiar.
Peter continued to hover behind the door as he listened to her soft singing. He didn’t know the lyrics or the melody, but it was unimportant at that moment. All that mattered was that she didn’t stop singing. Her voice was beautiful and she carried a tune as brilliantly, or more so, than many of the singers that he heard on the radio. She wasn’t perfect, but there was always beauty to be found in the small imperfections.
Unable to stand it any longer, he peered around the door, a small smile etched onto his face.
The music was gorgeous, but it was nothing compared to the sight that awaited him. His smile grew broader until it turned into a smirk. He moved boldly into the room and rested against the doorframe.
With her back to him, Kitty danced in place as she continued to sing quietly, her delicate hips swaying back and forth in a contagious rhythm.
“There are times I don’t feel safe, like we’re not on solid ground. But I trust your eyes when I see you look this way. I know we’ll find it, we’re gonna find it.”
She drifted off and the song became a hum again as she finished the task at hand and turned toward the oven. The smile on her face froze and the tune died in her throat as she caught sight of Peter leaning against the door.
An embarrassing blush crept up her neck and infused her face with a pink tint as she shot him a coy grin.
“Hey, Pete, I didn’t know you were there.”
He returned her smile with one that was as equally bashful, ashamed for having been caught peeping. Shaking his head, he was unable to stifle a slight chuckle as he took in her full appearance. She was covered from head to toe in a light dusting of flour and her hands were a sticky brown from the gooey batter that covered the plate she was holding.
She threw him an indignant glare as she shoved the pan she was holding into the waiting oven. Moving back to the isle in the middle of the kitchen, she brushed a stubborn trendle of hair out of her eyes and left behind a white streak of flour down the side of her cheek.
Another chuckle escaped Peter as he passed by her on his way to the other side of the island, keeping well out of her reach.
“What are you doing, Katya,” he asked as he surveyed the vast assortment of cooking utensils and ingredients that were spread haphazardly across the countertop.
“What does it look like I’m doing,” she countered in a huff, nervously wiping her hands on a light green dish towel.
He grinned and threw up his hands in mock defeat. “Sorry, I didn’t mean anything by it and I wasn’t trying to spy.”
She glared at him as she pointlessly shuffled a few things about.
“You have a lovely voice,” he continued bravely.
For a moment, she didn’t seem sure how to respond. Shock and embarrassment canvassed across her face before she finally settled on the latter.
“Thanks, Pete, but you weren’t supposed to hear that.”
“Why not?”
“Well -” She absently twirled her hair around her finger, trying to come up with an appropriate response. “Well, because I don’t sing if I know people are listening. I - I don’t think I sing very well.”
“But you do,” he said hurriedly, “you sing wonderfully. Like a natural.”
The blush from a moment before returned with a vengeance and she busied herself with the things on the counter to keep from meeting his earnest gaze.
“Thanks,” she mumbled.
He nodded and decided to purse a different topic as their current one clearly made her uncomfortable.
“You’re making cookies,” he observed, “from scratch.”
Kitty glanced up from fiddling with a fork to see his eyebrows arch up in amusement. “Wanna try one?”
Peter glanced over at the cooling rack and felt a tight ball of trepidation forming in his stomach. Despite the enticing smell that hung thick on the air, the presentation left much to be desired. The “cookies” as Kitty had called them were misshapen and slightly more than brown, only a dangerous shade or two away from black. They didn’t look like any cookies he had ever seen before.
“Go ahead,” she encouraged,” taste one.”
His head swiveled around and his eyes found hers. With a nod in the cookie’s direction he asked, “Have you tried one yet?”
She shook her head.
“Well, I think since you made them, you should have the honor of eating the first one, no?”
He reached across and gently lifted a malformed cookie, the safest looking one he could find, from its resting place and held it out to her in the palm of his hand.
“Go ahead.”
Kitty only considered his offer for second before giving him a sweet smile and pushing his hand back toward him.
“No, I think you should have the honor of eating the first cookie. What kind of cook would I be if I kept it all to myself?”
Peter gulped and forced himself to smile. “Well - when you put it that way…”
Taking a deep breath, Peter raised the cookie to his mouth and took a tiny bite. It was sugary and it was cinnamon-y and it was also very much burnt. The term “cook” was a relative expression in his modest opinion.
“Mmmm,” he said as he rolled the bitterness of the burnt part around on his tongue. “It’s very…tasty.”
Kitty stared at him hopefully, but her eyes belied the smile on her face. “You don’t like it do you?”
He started to lie, but knew he would get no satisfaction out of it. “It’s burnt.”
“I know,” she whispered with a hopeless sigh. “They all are.”
The disappointment in her voice was palpable and Peter lowered the cookie in shame. After a thoughtful moment of contemplation he was struck by an idea.
“Maybe you should turn the heat down.”
Kitty shook her head, “but the recipe says…”
He reached over and placed his hand on hers as she reached for a small index card that was half buried underneath a mountain of flour.
“I know what it says, but some ovens vary in their cooking times. That’s merely a suggestion to go by.”
Her head jerked upward in openmouthed shock and it was Peter’s turn to blush.
“Blame my culinary prowess on my grandmother,” he said, removing his hand from hers.
“She taught you how to cook?”
Nodding, he threw the cookie aside. “She said it was important that I learn to cook, something about being able to survive on my own. I don’t know; it was just her crazy idea.”
An awkward silence settled between in which they both fidgeted nervously. Each doing their best not to look directly at the other until the buzzer on the oven jolted them back to their current plane of existence.
Kitty hurriedly removed the next batch of unfortunate casualties from the oven and shoveled them onto their final resting place to cool.
Peter watched her every movement as she washed the pan and returned to the counter to place another batch of batter onto the smooth metal.
“Wait. Here, use this spoon and make little dollops of relatively equal size.”
She took the spoon without comment and proceeded to follow his directions. When the pan was full he directed her in decreasing the temperature of the oven, and they settled in to wait.
“So, why are you baking cookies at 3 in the morning,” he asked when the silence became too uncomfortable to bear.
“I couldn’t sleep,” she answered quietly while she drew circles in the spilt flour. “Baking, well, it helps to take my mind off of - things.” She grinned bashfully and added, “But it doesn’t seem to improve my culinary skills.”
Peter laughed kindly, “Well, practice makes perfect.”
“Yeah, well, you’d think I could be baking with the likes of Paula Deen by now,” she said sardonically.
The awkward moment passed as they both degenerated into fits of laughter. The conversation began to flow and before Peter knew it all of his previous worries had melted away in the wake of her warm smile. Their only interruption was the harsh sound of the oven buzzer going off once again.
Sighing, Kitty grabbed a mitten and prepared for the moment of truth. As she opened the oven, a smile spread across her features at the small, mostly round cookies that greeted her. Light brown, they were near perfection.
She pushed the black cookies aside to make room for the warm ones, checking the bottom just to make sure that they weren’t playing tricks on her, but the bottom was only slightly browner than the tops. Peter nodded approvingly and snatched one off the rack. Blowing on it, he tossed it gently between his hands like a baseball until it was cool enough to eat.
“Well,” she demanded.
He held up a finger, signally her to wait as he shoved the rest of the cookie into his mouth and chewed slowly.
“Try one and tell me,” he replied with relish after swallowing.
Kitty scoffed in irritation but wasted no time in snatching a golden brown cookie from the rack. It was warm and soft, nearly melting in her mouth as she eagerly devoured it.
Excitement coursed through her and she reached for another one, “It’s actually good!”
Pete nodded knowingly and tossed her a wink, “you’ll be out cooking Paula before you know it.”
She playfully swatted at his arm and he feigned injury, but they were both grinning hugely.
Kitty took another bite of her cookie. “Thanks, Pete.”
He nodded, taking in the casual grace with which she easily spooned the next batch onto the cookie sheet and the unrealized confidence that shone through her insecure exterior.
“I knew you could do it, Katya.”
It was then that he realized how such a small thing as baking cookies with a friend could make a world of difference in his mind-set. It was the small things in life that made everything else seem a little less daunting, and a lot easier to bear.
“Want some milk,” he asked as he stood and grabbed two glasses from the sink.
Kitty nodded and he emptied the jug.
“Thanks, Kitty,” he said as he returned to his stool and passed the glass to her.
“For what,” she asked between scrupulous mouthfuls.
“Just - for everything,” he said, tossing her one of his trademark grins.
For a moment she continued to stare blankly at him, but then her face broke into a brilliant smile and he knew that on some level she understood everything.
“You know Pete, I think we’ll have to do this again sometime.”
Author: Mariusgirl
Fandom: X-Men (Movieverse)
Characters: Kitty/Peter
Prompt: #35 - Voice
Word Count: 2,828
Rating: PG
Summary: It's the small things in life that make all the difference in the world.
Disclaimer: I own nothing.
Additional Notes: Unbeta'd and unashamed fluff.
Two weeks after the funeral and Peter still had trouble sleeping. His overtaxed mind ran rampant with convoluted anxiety and fear. He spent his restless nights tossing and turning before nodding off shortly before dawn, only to gain a few hours of sleep. His body, sleep deprived and exhausted, made him feel like death warmed over in the early morning hours.
He knew that he should leave the intricacies of running the Xavier Institute to those mutants more qualified than him, but he couldn’t help but spot the gapping deficiencies and minor bumps that served to slow down the education process. The school was now in the capable hands of Storm, but Peter refused to become complacent in his vigilant act of looking over the younger kids and ensuring that no harm befell the still shell-shocked school.
As an ardent member of the X-Men and a student at the Institute, he felt that it was his duty to worry about its safety and what roadblocks that the future might hold in store. Since the death of the Professor, by one of their own, his own personal illusions about what was right and what was wrong had been shaken to their very foundations. That wasn’t to say that he was beginning to question his moral compass, but he was beginning to question the world around him with more ferocity than ever before.
Dark memories of the night William Stryker attacked the school still clung to his dreams, stashed away in some dark catacomb within his mind. He remembered with striking clarity the horror and fear that had permeated the halls on that dreadful night. The terror in the eyes of the smaller children as they fled from the save haven that was their home, straight out into the harsh unforgiving world that loathed everything about them, was enough to send shivers of fear and hatred up and down his spine. Everything that he had come to believe about his world and the shelter that the school provided had crumbled down around him as he ran barefoot through the cold dark night carrying an unconscious girl and whispering, pleading, with the other children to be quite. It was a dark angry gash seared upon an otherwise naïve young heart.
And it had changed everything.
Peter was no longer able to look at the world and see it in quite the same light. He had progressed from a stage of innocence by entering the world of experience through means of sheer panic. The world was a dark place, full of monsters in every shape and color. From the smooth talking and debonair to the blatantly grotesque and macabre, monsters lurked in every realm of society just waiting to reach out and ensnare the unsuspecting victim. It was a lesson that had jarred Peter into action.
He took it upon himself to guarantee the safety of those smaller than he, and his first move had been to join the X-Men. In his mind, the rest was history.
But “the rest” was what kept him up at night and brought him full circle with his current demons: the security of the school now that the Professor was no longer its stanch defender. The other members of the X-Men got by on sheer force of power alone. Except for Storm, she was smart, but she wasn’t as refined and experienced as the Professor or Jean had been. And, as such, she was in over her head when it came down to the political workings of the school and its image in the bloodthirsty media.
Peter was at a loss when it came to helping out on that front. He was reticent and soft-spoken, often dubbed the gentle giant by his peers. So he degraded himself to more menial tasks such as taking up the training of the younger generation of potential X-Men. It wasn’t much, and it was far from enough, but in some small way it was helping out.
One less thing that Storm had to worry about, instead it weight heavily on his mind. And once his mind started reeling with such thoughts he knew that sleep would evade him. But he had long since learned that a warm glass of milk would often soothe his troubled soul and help him relax.
He threw off the covers and sat up in the darkness. The chill in his room swept across his bare chest and left billions of tiny goose bumps on his pale flesh. Shivering, he groped around in the dark for his jacket, stubbing his toe on the leg of his desk chair in the process. A small string of curses flew under his breath as he located a t-shirt and pulled it over his head. No longer caring about finding his jacket, he made his way to the door and gently pulled it open. He stuck his head out just far enough to peer up and down the hall and, when he was satisfied that he was alone, he ducked out into the corridor and made a beeline for the staircase.
A few of the steps creaked ominously as he trod quickly down them, but he paid them no attention. His mind was still stuck back in his room and the gloomy thoughts, and it wasn’t until he was nearly upon the kitchen that he realized the light was on. He slowed his pace and came to a stop two doors down.
Inside the kitchen, he could distinctly hear a girl humming unashamedly. The mouthwatering aroma of sugar cookies and cinnamon wafted through the open door and drifted tantalizingly around him, mingling with the gentle voice and beckoning him onward.
He found himself taking an unconscious step forward as his feet moved of their own accord. A few more steps and he was practically on the threshold.
The gentle voice that fell on his ears was as welcomed as a spring rain. The girl, oblivious to his presence, had graduated from merely humming the tune to full fledged singing. Her voice seemed heaven sent and extraordinarily familiar.
Peter continued to hover behind the door as he listened to her soft singing. He didn’t know the lyrics or the melody, but it was unimportant at that moment. All that mattered was that she didn’t stop singing. Her voice was beautiful and she carried a tune as brilliantly, or more so, than many of the singers that he heard on the radio. She wasn’t perfect, but there was always beauty to be found in the small imperfections.
Unable to stand it any longer, he peered around the door, a small smile etched onto his face.
The music was gorgeous, but it was nothing compared to the sight that awaited him. His smile grew broader until it turned into a smirk. He moved boldly into the room and rested against the doorframe.
With her back to him, Kitty danced in place as she continued to sing quietly, her delicate hips swaying back and forth in a contagious rhythm.
“There are times I don’t feel safe, like we’re not on solid ground. But I trust your eyes when I see you look this way. I know we’ll find it, we’re gonna find it.”
She drifted off and the song became a hum again as she finished the task at hand and turned toward the oven. The smile on her face froze and the tune died in her throat as she caught sight of Peter leaning against the door.
An embarrassing blush crept up her neck and infused her face with a pink tint as she shot him a coy grin.
“Hey, Pete, I didn’t know you were there.”
He returned her smile with one that was as equally bashful, ashamed for having been caught peeping. Shaking his head, he was unable to stifle a slight chuckle as he took in her full appearance. She was covered from head to toe in a light dusting of flour and her hands were a sticky brown from the gooey batter that covered the plate she was holding.
She threw him an indignant glare as she shoved the pan she was holding into the waiting oven. Moving back to the isle in the middle of the kitchen, she brushed a stubborn trendle of hair out of her eyes and left behind a white streak of flour down the side of her cheek.
Another chuckle escaped Peter as he passed by her on his way to the other side of the island, keeping well out of her reach.
“What are you doing, Katya,” he asked as he surveyed the vast assortment of cooking utensils and ingredients that were spread haphazardly across the countertop.
“What does it look like I’m doing,” she countered in a huff, nervously wiping her hands on a light green dish towel.
He grinned and threw up his hands in mock defeat. “Sorry, I didn’t mean anything by it and I wasn’t trying to spy.”
She glared at him as she pointlessly shuffled a few things about.
“You have a lovely voice,” he continued bravely.
For a moment, she didn’t seem sure how to respond. Shock and embarrassment canvassed across her face before she finally settled on the latter.
“Thanks, Pete, but you weren’t supposed to hear that.”
“Why not?”
“Well -” She absently twirled her hair around her finger, trying to come up with an appropriate response. “Well, because I don’t sing if I know people are listening. I - I don’t think I sing very well.”
“But you do,” he said hurriedly, “you sing wonderfully. Like a natural.”
The blush from a moment before returned with a vengeance and she busied herself with the things on the counter to keep from meeting his earnest gaze.
“Thanks,” she mumbled.
He nodded and decided to purse a different topic as their current one clearly made her uncomfortable.
“You’re making cookies,” he observed, “from scratch.”
Kitty glanced up from fiddling with a fork to see his eyebrows arch up in amusement. “Wanna try one?”
Peter glanced over at the cooling rack and felt a tight ball of trepidation forming in his stomach. Despite the enticing smell that hung thick on the air, the presentation left much to be desired. The “cookies” as Kitty had called them were misshapen and slightly more than brown, only a dangerous shade or two away from black. They didn’t look like any cookies he had ever seen before.
“Go ahead,” she encouraged,” taste one.”
His head swiveled around and his eyes found hers. With a nod in the cookie’s direction he asked, “Have you tried one yet?”
She shook her head.
“Well, I think since you made them, you should have the honor of eating the first one, no?”
He reached across and gently lifted a malformed cookie, the safest looking one he could find, from its resting place and held it out to her in the palm of his hand.
“Go ahead.”
Kitty only considered his offer for second before giving him a sweet smile and pushing his hand back toward him.
“No, I think you should have the honor of eating the first cookie. What kind of cook would I be if I kept it all to myself?”
Peter gulped and forced himself to smile. “Well - when you put it that way…”
Taking a deep breath, Peter raised the cookie to his mouth and took a tiny bite. It was sugary and it was cinnamon-y and it was also very much burnt. The term “cook” was a relative expression in his modest opinion.
“Mmmm,” he said as he rolled the bitterness of the burnt part around on his tongue. “It’s very…tasty.”
Kitty stared at him hopefully, but her eyes belied the smile on her face. “You don’t like it do you?”
He started to lie, but knew he would get no satisfaction out of it. “It’s burnt.”
“I know,” she whispered with a hopeless sigh. “They all are.”
The disappointment in her voice was palpable and Peter lowered the cookie in shame. After a thoughtful moment of contemplation he was struck by an idea.
“Maybe you should turn the heat down.”
Kitty shook her head, “but the recipe says…”
He reached over and placed his hand on hers as she reached for a small index card that was half buried underneath a mountain of flour.
“I know what it says, but some ovens vary in their cooking times. That’s merely a suggestion to go by.”
Her head jerked upward in openmouthed shock and it was Peter’s turn to blush.
“Blame my culinary prowess on my grandmother,” he said, removing his hand from hers.
“She taught you how to cook?”
Nodding, he threw the cookie aside. “She said it was important that I learn to cook, something about being able to survive on my own. I don’t know; it was just her crazy idea.”
An awkward silence settled between in which they both fidgeted nervously. Each doing their best not to look directly at the other until the buzzer on the oven jolted them back to their current plane of existence.
Kitty hurriedly removed the next batch of unfortunate casualties from the oven and shoveled them onto their final resting place to cool.
Peter watched her every movement as she washed the pan and returned to the counter to place another batch of batter onto the smooth metal.
“Wait. Here, use this spoon and make little dollops of relatively equal size.”
She took the spoon without comment and proceeded to follow his directions. When the pan was full he directed her in decreasing the temperature of the oven, and they settled in to wait.
“So, why are you baking cookies at 3 in the morning,” he asked when the silence became too uncomfortable to bear.
“I couldn’t sleep,” she answered quietly while she drew circles in the spilt flour. “Baking, well, it helps to take my mind off of - things.” She grinned bashfully and added, “But it doesn’t seem to improve my culinary skills.”
Peter laughed kindly, “Well, practice makes perfect.”
“Yeah, well, you’d think I could be baking with the likes of Paula Deen by now,” she said sardonically.
The awkward moment passed as they both degenerated into fits of laughter. The conversation began to flow and before Peter knew it all of his previous worries had melted away in the wake of her warm smile. Their only interruption was the harsh sound of the oven buzzer going off once again.
Sighing, Kitty grabbed a mitten and prepared for the moment of truth. As she opened the oven, a smile spread across her features at the small, mostly round cookies that greeted her. Light brown, they were near perfection.
She pushed the black cookies aside to make room for the warm ones, checking the bottom just to make sure that they weren’t playing tricks on her, but the bottom was only slightly browner than the tops. Peter nodded approvingly and snatched one off the rack. Blowing on it, he tossed it gently between his hands like a baseball until it was cool enough to eat.
“Well,” she demanded.
He held up a finger, signally her to wait as he shoved the rest of the cookie into his mouth and chewed slowly.
“Try one and tell me,” he replied with relish after swallowing.
Kitty scoffed in irritation but wasted no time in snatching a golden brown cookie from the rack. It was warm and soft, nearly melting in her mouth as she eagerly devoured it.
Excitement coursed through her and she reached for another one, “It’s actually good!”
Pete nodded knowingly and tossed her a wink, “you’ll be out cooking Paula before you know it.”
She playfully swatted at his arm and he feigned injury, but they were both grinning hugely.
Kitty took another bite of her cookie. “Thanks, Pete.”
He nodded, taking in the casual grace with which she easily spooned the next batch onto the cookie sheet and the unrealized confidence that shone through her insecure exterior.
“I knew you could do it, Katya.”
It was then that he realized how such a small thing as baking cookies with a friend could make a world of difference in his mind-set. It was the small things in life that made everything else seem a little less daunting, and a lot easier to bear.
“Want some milk,” he asked as he stood and grabbed two glasses from the sink.
Kitty nodded and he emptied the jug.
“Thanks, Kitty,” he said as he returned to his stool and passed the glass to her.
“For what,” she asked between scrupulous mouthfuls.
“Just - for everything,” he said, tossing her one of his trademark grins.
For a moment she continued to stare blankly at him, but then her face broke into a brilliant smile and he knew that on some level she understood everything.
“You know Pete, I think we’ll have to do this again sometime.”