Fictober Day 7: "No, and that's final."
"Please?"
"No."
"Please?"
"Nii-san, I said no."
"Pleeeease?"
"No, and that's final." Yukio's eyes were stern as he looked at his brother. "Honestly, Nii-san, you don't need the chocolate chips. You stay up too late as it is. Giving you sugar will only make it worse."
"They're not for me," Rin stressed. "Izumo shared her cookies the other day, ok? I... I wanted to try my hand at making some, to repay her. And..."
He trailed off then, mumbling something under his breath that Yukio didn't quite catch. Yukio's frown deepened, brows knitting together quizzically. Rin's cheeks were slightly pink. "What?"
"Nothing," he muttered. "I'll put it back. It's not a big deal. It's not like she'd eat them anyway. You know how she is."
That dejected tone stung a little. Yukio blinked, watching his twin march sulkily back over the aisle he got the chocolate chips from, and his brow twitched.
Oh, dear. Rin acted one or two ways when something went wrong in his day—bounce back immediately, or sulk about it for hours. There was no in-between. And just by looking at him now, he could tell today it would be the latter.
"Fine. I'll buy the chips," he said, rubbing his temple. Steered the cart into the aisle with the baking ingredients. "Just promise me you won't eat them all in one sitting?"
The shift was almost immediate. Rin's eyes sparkled and if his tail had been out, it would have been wagging. "For real? Thanks, Yukio!"
"Nii-san. Promise me."
"Yeah, yeah, I promise," Rin said, not sounding sincere in the slightest. "Do we have enough eggs? Should we get more? We should get more."
Yukio sighed under his breath as Rin continued to ramble on excitedly, telling him about how Izumo's cookies had been made by Paku and that he wanted to see if he could make them as well as she had. Yukio wondered idly if Rin had acted disappointed as a ploy to get him to cave. It was Rin, after all. Yukio wouldn't exactly put it past him.
"—and I really think she'll like it. Paku, I mean," he went on, grinning wide like a child who had just been promised a reward for his good behavior. "It's been a while since I've tried out a new recipe, you know? I think it'll be fun. It'll be nice to experiment."
Why is it always my paycheck that suffers as a result of your experiments? he wondered silently.
Later, after Yukio had paid and they went home with their weekly groceries, Rin dashed off to the kitchen. Yukio made his way up to their dorm to study in peaceful silence.
The pleasant aroma of chocolate coaxed him back downstairs, hiding under the pretense of telling his brother that he should set some time aside to work on his schoolwork or even training his flames.
When he walked into the kitchen, he met Rin's eyes. Rin, who was in the middle of taking a big bite of a freshly-baked cookie.
"Why did I expect anything different?" he asked, more to himself than the boy in front of him. And then: "You said they weren't for you."
Rin's expression quickly became sheepish. He chewed the remainder of his cookie, swallowed, and offered his trademark cheeky grin. Chocolate was smeared on his bottom lip. "I was, um, making sure that... they weren't poisoned?"
"Uh-huh. Sure," Yukio droned. He turned to make his way out of the kitchen. "Don't blame me when you can't sleep."
Rin squawked in protest when he backtracked to grab a cookie of his own, and only when he left the room again did Yukio allow himself to smile.