Don't Tell My Brother

Chapter 34 - Finally

It turned out baking was much easier when you made someone else do all the grunt work.

"Keep beating the butter and sugar." Lucas called back to Damien, his head one of the Castillo's cupboards as he searched for the rest of the ingredients. "Are you doing it properly? Do I need to come and have a look?" He was teasing, mostly. There was a chance he was screwing it up, though.

"I'm doing it right." Damien protested. "Why don't you give it a try, if you're so clever?"

"I've got spaghetti arms, remember?" Lucas said with a smile, turning back to search through the cupboard again. "You're much stronger, so you're going to do all the mixing." He also didn't like mixing, so if he could get Damien to do all of it, everything would go much smoother.

"I am stronger." Damien agreed, looking a little appeased. "But I feel like you're using this to get out of mixing."

"Someone needs to do the important work." Lucas said, still smiling to himself as he pushed aside a bag of flour and heard Damien's huff of annoyance. "Where's your cocoa powder?"

"Sorry?" Damien didn't sound sorry. Lucas leaned out of the cupboard to look at him, and found he was smirking down at the butter and sugar. He'd used to find it irritating, but he paused, watching Damien and his stupid, self-satisfied little smirk, and all of a sudden Lucas felt a bright, fleeting burst of happiness. "I'm too busy doing unimportant work." Damien continued, glancing Lucas' way, raising an eyebrow under his mop of dark curls.

"Baby."

Damien's eyes widened ever so slightly. "You're calling me—"

"A baby." Lucas nodded, smiling up at Damien. "Because you're being a baby. I'd have better luck making this with Gabriel."

"Cocoa's on the top shelf. Are you sure you'll be able to reach that high?" Damien shot back, grinning just as wide as Lucas was.

"I'm not even short." Lucas protested, turning back to the cupboards and pushing himself up onto his toes to reach the shelf in question.

"I know. But it makes you so annoyed when I say it."

Lucas managed to retrieve the cocoa powder, setting it down on the kitchen bench. "You're the worst. Let me have a look at that butter and sugar. Have you creamed it?"

"Of course I have." Lucas looked at him for a moment, and he sighed. "But maybe you should just check."

Lucas took the spoon, testing the consistency of the mixture. It was smooth and creamy, exactly what it was supposed to be. "It's good. Great, even."

"And you doubted me." Damien shook his head in mock sadness. "Really, tesoro, have you no faith?"

"Tesoro?" The word was unfamiliar on Lucas' tongue, but he could guess from the context that it was something rude. "That's some sort of insult, isn't it?"

"Yeah. It's another word for idiot. More like dumbass, actually. Or—"

"I get the point." Lucas said, and Damien shrugged, grinning down at him. "Give me another one."

"Another insult?" Damien's eyes were glinting now, the kind of look he got when he was holding back a laugh. "Querido." He said, reaching down to flick Lucas on the forehead.

"I'll be bilingual in no time. So come on, tesoro, are you going to help me with the dry ingredients?"

"Of course, querido."

Just as he and Damien began to measure out the flour and baking soda, a whirlwind of a woman burst into the kitchen, bringing with her a long, flowing scarf and the clink of bangles around her wrist.