If you're still taking prompts, something sweet with Kellan in the Domestic!AU?
Note: Nya’s around fifteen here, Kellan’s about twelve.
*
The kitchen is a disaster, but it’s a controlled disaster. An artfully crafted baking maelstrom.
“Where are the chocolate chips?” Nya demands, not even looking up from the bowl she is busily stirring.
The bang of the oven door alerts him that the third batch of cookies is done, the fourth sliding in after it..
“I don’t think we have any more cooling racks,” he says, glancing up at her over his homework. Nya sighs, oven mitts planted on her hips.
“They’ll be cool enough by the time the next batch comes out. Here. Have a cookie.”
A chocolate chip cookie is dropped on his math book. Kellan frowns, but only picks it up and brushes away the crumbs.
“Sorry,” Nya says, rooting around the table near what Kellan is privately thinking of as The Extracts Quadrant.
“S’okay,” Kellan says. Takes a bite of warm cookie. The chocolate melts against his tongue.
He watches her for another minute, chewing. He doesn’t say, “She’ll be okay.” He doesn’t say, “Everything will be all right.” He doesn’t say, “I understand.”
Instead, he says, “We’re out of chocolate chips.”
Nya swears.
“Don’t tell the Dads I said that,” she says. “You never heard that.”
“I go to middle school,” Kellan retorts.
“Well, you never heard it from me.”
“You could make banana bread,” Kellan says. “The kind with the peanut putter and nutella swirls in it?”
“I could,” Nya muses, counting eggs. “Hmm.”
By the time she’s begun beating the bananas into submission, forehead knotted in frustration (and worry), Kellan’s gone back to his homework.
Honestly, it’d be easier for him to focus in his room. But his sister needs to see him now. She needs to hear him chewing on a cooking and the scratch of his pencil while he does his homework. At least until Dad and Papa and Simra get back from the hospital.
When she takes the last batch of cookies out, he asks for another.
The front door opens and Nya freezes, hands stilling in the act of placing the banana bread in the oven. Kellan looks up, too.
“Nya?” Papa calls, “Kellan?”
“In the kitchen, Papa!” Kellan calls. Nya let’s out a shaky breath, but follows him to the hallway.
They’ve only finished taking off their shoes by the time they get there. Wash looks at them and smiles, a couple of pizza boxes under his arm. Simra waves from Maine’s arms. There’s an over-large ice bag taped to her foot.
“Just sprained,” Wash says. “Badly, sprained, but just a sprain.”
“I got us pizza,” Simra says, her smile wobbly.
Kellan smiles back. He leans against Nya’s side, so he feels when she sighs, the shuddering tension trying to leave her. He wasn’t in the room when Simra tripped trying to show Dad a dance for her recital but he heard her scream. Nya hadn’t been in the room either, but he’d seen her dash from upstairs.
“Nya made cookies,” Kellan says. “And banana bread.”
Maine nods, moves to set Simra down gently on the couch, propping her foot up on a pillow.
“Peanut butter?” Simra asks, eyes wide and hopeful.
“Yeah,” Nya croaks. “Yeah, it’ll be ready soon.”
“Good,” Wash says, setting the boxes down on the coffee table. “Kellan, help me get some plates?”
Nya sits down on the couch opposite Simra, and Simra promptly begins regaling her with her story about the ER, her voice gaining strength as she goes.
In the kitchen, Papa eyes the pile of dirty baking dishes, Kellan’s mostly-finished homework on the table.
“Are you okay?” he asks in undertone.
“Yeah,” Kellan says. taking the plates as he’s handed them. “I’m okay. Nya made four batches of cookies and banana bread, though.”
Papa winces. Simra’s voice floats in from the other room, Dad’s rumbling chuckle the bass to her flute-ish voice. Nya’s voice is absent.
“This kind of stuff is hard on her,” Papa says.
Kellan nods. He knows. He knows he wasn’t Nya’s first brother. Just like Nya knows when to come find him, and when to let him hide. Nya knows how to remind him he’s safe.
Dad squeezes his shoulder.
“Let’s go eat,” he says. “Thanks for looking out for her, buddy.”
Kellan shrugs.
“What are siblings for?” he says.