Chapter Text
The house smells like delicious things when Grantaire gets home from delivering his latest commission, but that's no surprise, Enjolras is physically incapable of cooking bad food. What is a little bit of a surprise is Gina standing on a stepladder beside Enjolras, wielding a spatula as long as her arm and frowning intently down at what appears to be a skillet of raw eggs.
"What's going on in here?" Grantaire comes into the kitchen to lean his shoulder against the wall and smile at both of them.
"Daddy!" Gina abandons the spatula in the eggs to hop down off the stepladder (from the very top step, they are going to have to have a conversation about that or Grantaire's heart is not going to survive it intact) and run over to him, squealing. "Papa's teaching me to cook!"
Her hands are wet with raw egg and she lives little yellow handprints on his pants when she wraps her arms around his legs to hug him, but they're his painting pants anyway, what's one more stain to add to the collection. "Is he?" He scoops Gina up and gives her a messy kiss on the cheek, then smiles past her at Enjolras. "You lucky girl. I've been trying to get Papa to teach me to cook for years, and still the best I can manage is to boil spaghetti without burning the pan."
"That's an exaggeration." Enjolras glances sidelong at him and gives him a slow smile as he rescues the spatula out of the pan and stirs the eggs that Gina abandoned. "You fed yourself perfectly well before we came along. How'd the drop-off go?"
"I survived mostly on take-out and PB&J, let's be honest here." Gina's squirming in his arms, so Grantaire sets her down and lets her run back to Enjolras's side. She uses a grip on his trousers to help pull herself back up the stepladder. "And it was fine, the client loved it." He crowds in behind Gina and gives her a noisy kiss on the crown of her head before he leans in for a gentler one from Enjolras. "Said she'd recommend me to her friends, so that's always good."
"Papa!" Gina slams her fists down on her hips and twists to glare up at Enjolras, her face screwed up with all the fury a five-year-old is capable of mustering. "You ruined it!"
"It was burning, Little G." Grantaire gives Enjolras a quick, startled grin to hear Enjolras using the nickname he first came up with for Gina. "You were too busy saying hi to Daddy to remember to stir it."
"But it was mine, you said this one was mine, and now it's not."
The eggs are nearly cooked through anyway. Enjolras slides them out of the pan onto a waiting plate and puts the pan back on the flame. "All right, sweetheart, we'll try it again. Let's teach Daddy how to make an omelet, shall we?"
Gina claps her hands and bounces on the stepladder, and Grantaire nearly has a heart attack right there in the middle of the kitchen. "Daddy, watch! I'ma show you how to crack eggs!"
Enjolras catches his gaze over Gina's head, and his eyes are laughing. Eat carefully, he mouths. Watch for shells.
Grantaire nods his understanding, and then leans down over Gina's shoulder. "All right, Little G. Show Daddy how it's done."