NOTES: This is another short story I've been noodling around with for a while, and I decided to stop questioning it and just start posting it. It's too much for a one shot, but it won't be an open ended chapter story, either. The chapters will be short, too, since this is a side effort and I don't want it to really slow down Little Moments - Side Stories AU. Hopefully you all will find it … diverting. Leave a review, let me know what you think.

.

.

Breakfast

Four days into the first summer trip

Breakfast. Just regular old scrambled eggs, bacon and toast breakfast. They could do at least that, right? And it would work for any time of day, so whenever Grandpa's, er, exoticcooking got too out of hand - and face it, even he ended up holding his nose as he gagged down the results of a few of his inventive recipes - as long as there were eggs in the fridge and some bread they would have at least something edible as a fall-back. Beats eating peanut butter sandwiches or mac and cheese all the time.

And don't forget some fruit. Gotta have a balanced meal. Say a banana or blueberries or OJ or something. Maybe a smoothie - that might shut the little freakazoid's mouth for five minutes, at least.

Simple. At least it was in Gwen's mind. And Numbnuts seemed to get it when she explained it to him ten minutes ago, when they agreed to their expedient truce and divvied up who was doing what while Grandpa was out shopping for more oddball 'food'. The little twerp had been a total pain in the butt as soon as he got into the Rustbucket when Grandpa picked him up, but he was as fed up with the creepy meals as she was.

Gwen volunteered to handle the eggs and toast, leaving her cousin to fry the package of bacon and rinse off some blueberries. Even that knucklehead couldn't Ben it up. Right?

"Be careful with that bacon, dork, the grease can spit further than you think." Not that she was all that concerned about her jerkwad cousin, it was just that if he burned himself bad enough they'd have to waste hours at an emergency room, and that wasn't how she wanted to spend a summer vacation day.

The boy snorted and rolled his eyes with caustic sarcasm. "Like I need cooking advice from you, super nag! I've been doing this since, let me think... " He pretended to have a thoughtful look. "… like forever! I know how to fry bacon!"

With an obnoxious look, he turned back to the stove and the cast iron skillet filled with half cooked bacon strips, the staccato noise of popping and sizzling filling the air along with the enticing aroma. Two thirds of the pack over max heat, just like his dad did it, because he wanted to get his part of the meal done fast so he'd win. They might have agreed to suspend their bickering and pranks long enough to make something to eat in the cramped RV galley, but that didn't mean he couldn't have some fun doing it.

"Just make sure you don't mess up the eggs, dweeb. Scrambled eggs aren't supposed to be crunchy" he said looking over at her as she was breaking a half dozen eggs into a bowl by the sink. He smirked as he caught her fishing out bits of broken shell. Tricky buggers, they take a little concentration to drag out of the whites, even with a finger.

"Mind your own self, you, you... doofus!" Gwen spluttered, equally annoyed by him and her unbelievably lame comeback attempt. Insufferable little jerk! Last time she'd watch out for his sorry butt.

She poured some half and half in the bowl of eggs and whisked it all together with a fork, then turned and positioned herself in front of the unused burner to the brat's right. He was taking out a batch of cooked strips from the pan and putting them on a plate lined with paper towels. What's with that, she started thinking, then realized Oh, absorbs the grease from the bacon. Clever. He wasn't a totally clueless baboon after all.

She was reaching for the control to turn on the burner under her pan when she saw Ben was about to dump the rest of the package in his right hand into his skillet, which now held about a quarter inch of smoking hot grease from the first batch.

"Ben STOP! You're going to make the grease splash!" she yelled out, a second too late. The lump of bacon strips flopped into the pan sending a wave of the grease flying towards his left arm and hand hanging at his side. It hit the bare skin with a sickening sizzle as the boy dropped the empty package and grabbed for his burning left hand, howling in pain and slumping against the counter next to the stove.

Gwen stepped behind him while instinctively turning off the burner under his pan, looking over his right shoulder at his burned arm and hand, quickly turning an angry shade of red, as he stopped screaming so he could suck in a deep breath. Her arms wrapped around his sides as her hands reached for his elbows, catching him just as the full impact of the searing pain hit and made his legs buckle. Ben screamed again, unable to make words, as she almost picked the smaller boy up and shuffled the three steps to the sink. She turned the cold water knob as far as she could, then shoved his left hand under the stream of water, holding him up against her right side with her arm.

He gasped again, this time gritting his teeth to hold back another shout, managing to only whimper instead. Gwen glanced at his left cheek and saw tears seep from his tightly closed eye, then refocused on the sink, moving his arm and hand back and forth under the cold water.

"It's OK, I've got you Ben. Keep your arm under the water, it'll help." she said soothingly as she held him up, steadying him for a minute as he soldiered through the pain until he could stand on his own and open his watering eyes. Gwen could feel his ribs heaving as he took deep breaths through a clenched jaw.

"I need to sit down" he hissed. His face was three shades paler than normal, and tears tracked down his cheeks.

"You sure?"

Ben could only nod his head, grimacing in pain. Gwen turned off the water and backed around him as he turned and unsteadily started to shuffle to the dining booth, holding his left arm against his chest. He stumbled after a few steps, but croaked "I'm OK" before she could grab his elbows again. She kept her hands at the ready, though, until he got to the booth and almost fell into the bench seat, face down on the table with his arms beside his head. Water from his burned arm pooled on the table and trickled to his face, mixing with the tears dripping off his cheeks.

Gwen slid into the bench opposite him and got her first good look at his left arm. It was her turn to gasp at the damage. "Oh my gosh!" she murmured.

A splotch roughly three inches wide stretched across his arm above the wrist where most of the hot grease hit him, with several quarter-size spots on the back and heel of his hand. It was all a deep scarlet color, with a couple small blisters near the middle of the largest blotch. The water from the poorly insulated freshwater tank was really cold - the temperature the night before was in the mid-40s in the Sierra Nevada foothills, even though summer was well underway. As cold as it was, she could still feel heat coming off his burned wrist.

She had gotten a few small grease burns from previous attempts at cooking that hurt worse than any other injuries she had gotten, except maybe the time she slipped doing gymnastics and got that concussion - who knew the padded balance beam could hurt so much? Gwen could only imagine how painful his burns were, and wondered if he should get it treated by a doctor. She immediately felt guilty at her thought only three minutes ago before realizing they couldn't even look for a hospital until Grandpa got back.

And then she felt worse when Ben looked up at her, his face contorted and eyes wide and wet from pain and fear. "It hurts..." he whimpered. "Make it stop?"

Gwen would do anything to make that pleading look go away, to make him stop hurting. He may be a monumental jackass, but he didn't deserve to be in this kind of pain for it. She'd trade places in a heartbeat, and almost cried herself in frustration at her inability to help.

Her eyes swept around the RV, searching desperately for some clue about what she could do to help when she felt an odd tingle in her hands. She looked at where they rested on the table, and inhaled sharply at the sight of a faint cobalt blue glow shimmering around her palms and seeping outward down her fingers and up her wrists. A detached part of Gwen's brain reasoned that she should be freaking out about this inexplicable thing happening to her, but that would have to wait until her cousin's agony stopped; instead her left hand moved instinctively towards Ben's burned arm, stopping when she could feel heat coming from it a half inch before coming in contact with his skin.

The glow got brighter and expanded to surround his arm, and she brought her other hand to add to it. She could feel the... something moving from her hand to him, as more of it moved from her body down her arms, feeding the flow of - what? Whatever it was that was healing Ben's arm and hand as they watched the angry red skin fade to a light pink. His eyes were big as plates as he sat up and looked at her with shock, the pupils blown wide behind a thin circle of wet deep green.

Ben had picked up his head and gasped when he saw the light, whether from the pain or the glow off her hands she couldn't tell. "What are you doing? How are you doing that?!" he said in an awed whisper.

"I... I don't know! I was thinking about how could I make the burn go away and this just started." Gwen replied, a little panicky. "Is it hurting you?" she asked with sudden concern.

"No! It feels kinda tingly, but it's helping a lot!" he said, relief obvious in his voice and on his face. "Keep doing that!" He kept staring intently at their hands as his right one found the spot on the back of his neck that he rubbed when he didn't know what else to do.

Another half a minute went by without the pink color of his burned arm getting any more like his normal skin tone, and Gwen sensed it was as healed as it was going to get when the blue glow stopped as abruptly as it started.

What did she just do?! How did it work? And could she do it again? The thought was scary and exciting at the same time.

"Why did you stop?! It still hurts!" Ben complained, looking at her as if he was angry about it, the ungrateful little prick. "And what the hell was that?!"

Gwen let out an exasperated breath. "Ben! We're not supposed to be swearing! What if Grandpa heard you?"

"Even when you do some freaky light show like that? What am I supposed to say?" he snapped back. "Besides, I've heard Grandpa say worse about way less cool things." he muttered, still glaring at her.

She decided to let his cussing go this time. She wasn't responsible for how he acted, and besides, that was pretty amazing.

"I don't know what it was. It just happened - I didn't control when it started and stopped. I just wanted to do something that would help." She looked at him with a neutral expression and shrugged her shoulders.

They were uncomfortably silent for a few moments, staring blankly at anything besides each other, before Ben got up and started cleaning up the mess on the stove, including the bowl of uncooked scrambled eggs.

"I'll take care of the eggs, dork. Just be careful with the pan you were using, OK? I don't want to see you get burned again." Gwen said, not as sarcastic as usual.

He was about to say some nasty comeback like he always did as he looked angrily over at her, but the insult stuck in his throat when he saw the look of concern in her green eyes before she turned away. His anger melted away as quickly as it rose.

"Hey, dwee, ... um, Gwen?" Ben waited until she was looking at him again. "I, ah... Thanks." He ducked his head sheepishly, watching her lips curl up into a small grin.

"Of course, you doofus. We're family, after all."