AN: So, I just finished Episode 5 of Warehouse 13 and I suddenly thought, What is Pete's obsession with cookies? So, here's a short one-shot based on rambling musing and fueled by mango sorbet!
Cookies And Milk
Pete Lattimer was raised on one constant: if anything goes wrong, cookies and milk will solve it.
When he was three, he fell down the swing and cracked his tooth. His mom had swooped him up and plunked a glass of milk and a snickerdoodle cookie in front of him. Then, while he sniffled and ate, his mother cooed and smiled at him, before covering his scraped knee with a Power Rangers bandage. "There, all better now." Then she kissed it and sent him back outside, laughing.
When he was seven, he got into a fight with Colin Rogers, the boy that sat on the other side of Mindy Ratchetts. Colin had given him a bruised face and he'd given Colin a concussion. His dad had looked at him when he got home, sighed and simply pulled out a plate of cookies and two glasses. In between the milk and cookies, the whole story had spilled out about how Colin had tried to kiss Mindy after Mindy had kissed him. His dad chuckled, ruffled his hair and said, "Fighting doesn't solve anything. If words don't fix it, then you try actions. But for now, why don't you patch things up with Colin?" He'd shared a bag of cookies with Colin the next day and they were best friends until Colin's family moved to Maine.
When he was twelve, his dad died, being a hero. The funeral was a disaster as people he didn't know poured into the building and spoke to him like they knew him. His mom wouldn't stop crying and his sister hid behind her, frightened by the unknown faces and rapid lips. He'd stood silently next to his mom until the ceremony was over. That night, his aunt Matty handed the people in the kitchen hot chocolate and pulled out a few plates of cookies, buried under the other dishes well-meaning people had brought. After a few sniffles, the cookies had devoured and a slightly more comforting silence had filled the room. He even managed to make his mom smile a little by cleaning up.
When he was nineteen, his heart had been broken by Rebecca Farness, a beautiful blonde majoring in English and philosophy, the night before their anniversary. She'd sat him down and flat out told him that she couldn't date a guy who had more fun with other girls than he did with her. He'd said that he'd only been talking to them. She'd shouted, "Yeah, well, you can enjoy 'flirting' even more now that I'm out of the picture!" She'd slammed the door on her way out. He spent an entire two days in his dorm room, until his mother had driven down, banged on the door and given him three plates of chocolate chip cookies and a hug.
When he was twenty-three, he'd ended up in ICU for the first time he could remember. He had been on some undercover assignment, some sort of exchange between departments, when the building they were in had exploded. His family had been in shock when they'd found out. His mom couldn't stop crying. Finally, once the hysterics had died down, someone had passed around a few trays of cookies. If there was one thing Lattimer women did well, it was bake. They'd left piles of crumbs in his room.
Now, he was older, more used to blazing guns and family phone calls after some worrying mission, more used to one night stands instead of one woman, but cookies still comforted him in the way that he always bought Power Ranger band-aids. So, when Myka asked him how he was doing, he rasped out the only response he knew, "Sore. Everywhere. Need cookies."