Cupcakes

When Kankurou and Temari woke up that morning, they had gone for their usual routine, as far as their younger brother could see. Temari always came to the breakfast table first, and after checking pointlessly to see if her other younger brother was there yet and giving a brief and somewhat tense greeting to the youngest, who was at the table, watching her intently, she fixed herself a bowl of cereal. She didn't ask if he wanted one. She never did, and that was fine because he didn't. He had tried that cereal once and it had been very sweet. A varying amount of time later, Kankurou would come down, face paint firmly in place, and give a tired greeting to his sister before fixing his own breakfast. Sometimes Kankurou remembered that Gaara was always at the table and greeted him too, sometimes he gave a vague greeting to both his siblings, and sometimes he greeted Gaara after he'd started to cook or after he had sat down. He never offered his brother anything either. That was fine too. The youngest of the three siblings had no wish to sample his elder brother's cooking. He highly doubted it was any good.

During breakfast, the elder two siblings would talk. Recently, they had done their best to include Gaara in their conversations, occasionally asking him questions or asking his opinion on a certain subject, to which he would give a vague or simple reply, and the conversation would continue.

He had been shocked the first time they had chosen to include him. He hadn't been listening to his siblings' conversation. Instead, he had been studying his brother's face, trying to figure out why he always wore that garish war paint, when Temari had turned to him and simply said "Isn't that right, Gaara?"
Kankurou had frozen up, shocked that his sister would consider asking Gaara's opinion. Gaara looked to her upon hearing his name, and it took him a moment to realise she was waiting for him to respond. Tension filled the air, the kind that you could only cut through with a guillotine, and he found himself reluctant to admit he hadn't been paying attention.
"Sure." He eventually stated, though he had no idea what he was agreeing to. Temari smiled and turned back to Kankurou with a triumphant look, and the horror on the elder brother's face slowly slipped into an embarrassed annoyance. Gaara paid attention to the conversations more often after that, and Temari continued to ask his opinion, a habit that Kankurou eventually fell into as well.

After breakfast, the three siblings went their separate ways. Gaara went out to train that day, as Kankurou had shut himself away with his puppets and Temari said she had promised to meet someone in the village that day. The day was uneventful, aside from the usual whispers and efforts to avoid him, which he did his best to ignore, and he went back home when he started to feel hungry.

This was probably the strangest interruption to routine he had ever seen, if he was honest. When he returned to the kitchen, there was a sweet smell in the air. It reminded him of a bakery he had wandered into once. Someone had been baking, but Temari didn't cook and Kankurou certainly didn't seem like he enjoyed cooking. And yet, someone had left twelve cupcakes on the table. All chocolate, with some reddish-pink icing and raspberries on top. Probably left out to cool. Glancing around, the young shinobi saw no sign of either of his siblings, and curiously lifted one of the cakes. He disliked sweet things, and had no intention of eating it, but it was still a strange item to find around here. And still warm.
"You can have that, if you want."
Slowly, Gaara turned to look at his brother, who was now stood in the doorway, watching with a bored expression. "I don't want it." Gaara answered after a moment, but he didn't put it down. Even so, for a split second, Kankurou looked disappointed.
"Fair enough." He turned to leave again, and the younger brother frowned. He was still learning to build bonds with others, and his first step was to build those bonds with his siblings, and some part of him believed his siblings wished to build those bonds with him, but it was difficult. If he wanted to build bonds, he would have to spend more time with them, talk to them more. He knew this. Of course he knew this, but it didn't make it any easier.
"Did you make them?" The words were out of his mouth before he'd registered the thought, but Kankurou stopped and turned.
"Yeah. There's plenty of stuff left that'd otherwise go to waste, so I decided...why not? So...I made some cakes."
"How?"
Now, the puppeteer frowned. Had Gaara just asked him how to make a cake? It seemed fairly straightforward to him. Then again, it made sense that Gaara wouldn't know how to bake. "You...want me to teach you how to bake cupcakes?"
He didn't particularly want that, Gaara decided almost instantly, but Kankurou was interested in spending time with him now. He nodded. "Ones without chocolate."
"I can do that..." The elder went to the cupboards, pulling out a variety of objects. Large bowls and wooden spoons, bags of sugar and flour, a set of scales..."Could you get eggs and butter from the fridge?"
"Eggs and butter." Gaara echoed dully, doing as told and placing the ingredients beside the mixing bowl. Kankurou stood back so his younger brother could stand at the counter.
"Okay, first, we need to measure out the flour. For twelve cakes, you need six ounces of flour, and six ounces of sugar. Equal weights, and half that number of eggs, so we'll be using three eggs. Anyway, for now just...measure the flour." He watched for a moment before nodding. "That's it. Now it goes into the bowl."
Tipping the flour into one of the bowls didn't go too well. It blew up in a cloud of floury smoke, some finding its way onto Gaara's face and black top. He coughed and Kankurou tried not to laugh, reminding himself firmly that laughing could cost him his life.
"Okay, that's a, um, occupational hazard, jaan. That happens even if you're careful. Okay, now six ounces of sugar. Careful, don't pour out too much at once..." There was a huge heap of sugar on the scales now. Almost the whole packet! Gaara scowled at the scales.
"It went wrong."
"Just put the sugar back in the bag. You can use your hands if you want, you've washed them. Or pour it all back in from the scale bowl itself."
And so the next few minutes were spent shoveling sugar back into the sugar bag until the scales read roughly six ounces. Kankurou helped out, of course.
"Now, that goes in a different bowl. We'll add them together in a minute." While the younger brother carefully transferred the sugar to its proper place, the elder unwrapped the butter and cut chunks off until the remaining stick weighed the same as the sugar and flour. "Same measurements for the butter." He explained before placing it in with the sugar. He then handed Gaara the wooden spoon. "This next bit, you have to cream that together, which is basically working them together with the spoon until they're sort of like a paste. Just try and mash the butter into the sugar. I've forgotten to get a few things." He turned back to the cupboards as Gaara struggled with the latest task. It was harder than it sounded. The butter refused to move and wouldn't mix with the sugar right unless he managed to cut it with the spoon and mash it against the side of the bowl. As he continued to struggle on, a whisk and smaller bowl was placed on the counter, on the other side of the flour bowl, and a moment later, a sieve joined them.
"What are those for?" The redhead asked suspiciously.
"The eggs." Came the simple response. "Need a hand with that?"
He released the spoon. "You do this. I'll do the eggs."
"Yeah, sure." They switched places, and Kankurou took care of the creaming with ease.
"What do I do exactly?"
"Crack the eggs against the side of the small bowl and pour the yolks in, then whisk them up." For a moment, Gaara hesitated, hyper aware of what he was doing lest he mess up again. Then he became hyper aware that Kankurou was watching him, and quickly set to cracking three eggs. No mistakes here, and there were still four eggs left over for breakfast the next morning. "Done."
"Yeah, I'm done here too. Bring that over here."
Once again, he found himself doing exactly as his big brother asked, and once again he messed up.

When Kankurou had unwrapped the butter, he had carelessly tossed the wrapper onto the edge of the counter. When he left to get everything for the eggs, the wrapper had fallen to the floor. Gaara did not see it there, and stepped on it, and his foot slipped from underneath him...

He didn't hit the floor, or even a bed of sand. Egg went flying, the bowl leaving his hands as he threw them out to save himself. Hands closed firmly around his wrists, keeping him from falling too far. Kankurou had caught him, and was somewhat humourously splattered in the face with a good amount of egg.
"You okay, ototo?" He asked, helping Gaara right himself. He had a strange tone to his voice, something the young jinchuriki took a bit of time to identify. His brother was concerned.
"I'm fine..." When Kankurou released him, he wiped his hands off on his top, only to find it was also covered in egg. The puppeteer paused to pick up the butter wrapper and put the rest of the butter away, then returned and placed the bowl on the counter again. Then, he started to laugh.
"Sorry!" He managed through the fit of giggles. "I'm not laughing at you, honest I'm not, but this is...it's not a situation I ever thought I'd be in. In the kitchen, with you, trying to bond over cupcakes and covered in egg!"
Gaara went to crack three more eggs. "It seems to work."
"Huh?" He laughed again, picking up the bowl of flour. "You think so?"
"You seem relaxed." It honestly seemed that slipping and throwing egg everywhere had broken the tension.
"I suppose I am."
He whisked the egg up again. "Do you enjoy cooking?" It did strike him that he knew very little about his brother.
"I find it pretty enjoyable, I guess. Not my favourite thing to do, but still. It's a hobby."
"I see."
Kankurou seemed to have the same kind of thought concerning what he did and didn't know about his younger brother. "What do you like doing?"
"As...hobbies?"
"Yeah. Oh, pour some of the egg into the sugar, I'll add a bit of flour, you mix it and we'll repeat that until it's all together."
Gaara thought for a moment. "I'm not sure."
"Do you have any big interests?"
"...Cacti..."
"Cacti?"
"Yes. I've been trying to care for one. It's not as easy as some might think."
"Nothing ever really is, but I get what you mean."
They fell silent then, but Gaara was okay with that, Kankurou was remarkably relaxed in his company, and he supposed just being in his presence, working with him on something that wasn't life or death, it would improve their relationship.

When they finished mixing everything, Kankurou brought a baking tray, a new spoon and several cupcake cases over to the counter with the simple explanation that they needed to separate the cake mix into the cases, trying to make them roughly equal. That was simple enough, yet Gaara still managed to drop a good amount down his front, and then into the oven they went, and the boys set about cleaning everything away.

~*~*~*~*~

Much later, Temari entered the living room to find two plates of cakes on the table. She heard footsteps behind her and glanced over her shoulder.
"Kankurou, I think you have a problem. You're constantly making these things..."
"I didn't make those ones." He answered, coming to stand beside his elder sister. "Gaara did."
"Gaara?" She hesitated. "Are they safe to eat?"
"They're quite good, actually. You can have one if you want. I think he actually enjoyed making them."
Temari looked at the collection of cupcakes on the table and thought that maybe, just maybe, her youngest brother was going to become a real brother, one they wouldn't have to fear, and that, with any luck, he could even stay that way.