Work Text:
Kaito's kitchen is filled with the sound of pencil scratching paper, marking meaningless lines into the thin sheet, the dull repetitive motions being interrupted by the sound of his grandmother baking, mixing ingredients in a bowl, and then taking a rolling pin and flattening put the dough, shaping it, making it something new.
She doesn't speak. His grandfather is out, working for some toy factory, earning minimum wage. His grandma sells cookies to the neighbors, sometimes she gives them out for free to the little kids that can't quite afford them yet.
However, a situation that was meant to be peaceful, was wrought with unspoken tension. Stretched like a rubber band between a toddler's fingers, it was just about ready to snap.
The clicks of the rolling pin stopped for a moment, before continuing. "Kei, I..." His grandmother starts off, before choking on her words. She doesn't know how to breach the topic. After all, when she was young, she barely even heard of it. It was a foreign concept.
"Kaito, please, gamma." His grandmother stills her hands, gripping tighter onto the rolling pin, her lips turning into a fine line as she stared down at the cookie dough. It wasn't the first time Kaito had to correct his grandmother. It surely wouldn't be the last.
"...Yes, right. Kaito... I, I love you. Dearly." She starts off again, correcting herself. She continues rolling the dough, probably rolling it too thin, but at the moment it's a proper distraction from the conversation she was having with her grandson. Even if it was difficult, it was a needed conversation. "I... cannot speak for your grandfather. But I support you endlessly."
Kaito grips his pencil tighter, staring down at the math homework that slowly morphed into something less than that. Squiggles and swirls, lines and shapes that didn't make any sense, numbers became disconfigurd lines. It's the incoming frustration of being rejected and accepted and rejected again, and Kaito almost wants to scream.
"Yeah. I know." Kaito speaks through a gritted jaw. He'd asked his grandmother to cut his hair. She'd said no. She constantly misgendered him, she called him by his dead name, she blamed it on her poor memory but it was more than that. It was the braiding of hair in the morning that didn't cease, it was the cute decorations in lunches that wouldn't go away no matter how many times Kaito said he didn't want it. He loved his grandmother but he just wanted to feel like a boy.
His grandmother pauses her rolling, wiping away tears with the back of her hand, the slight brush of her glasses up her face before her hand moves away and her glasses go back to where they rested before. "Kaito, you're my grandchild. I don't... I don't understand these changes you're going through. But the least I can do is try. All I want is to support you... It's what your parents would've done."
She doesn't look at him. Her words don't feel sincere. It feels like she won't change, won't make an effort to break old habits. Saying he wanted to feel like a boy- wanted to be a boy, it was difficult for his grandmother to accept, after so long of knowing him as her "precious baby girl."
But it was the truth. Kaito is a boy. "I'm ten years old, gamma. I can barely remember ma anymore." Five years had passed, and he could barely remember his mother's face. It was only kept alive in photo albums. "Thanks." The word is cold, unfeeling. Like pouring salt to an open wound.
His grandma shivers. She purses her lips, presses the rolling pin down harder, and rolls the dough extra thin with the extra strength of her arms. It isn't much, but it makes a point. She's frustrated. She's tired of the back and forth too, she wants a solution. There is no negotiation. There is acceptance, or there is nothing.
Kaito can forgive. He can forgive his grandma forever, but that doesn't mean he won't be hurt when she won't change. He doesn't want to deal with it- he's not even a teenager, he shouldn't be difficult! Yet he knows, that if he were to take back everything now, his grandma wouldn't allow it.
The pencil end snaps against the paper. Wood bends in multiple directions, the broken tip scattering across the paper and to the floor. Kaito sighs, not even bothering to find the pencil tip. "I'll... Be in my room. Got homework to do. See ya at dinner gamma." His voice is colder than usual, but he snatches the paper off the table and stalks off.
His grandmother watches him leave before sighing heavily and picking up the dough and forming it back into a ball to attempt to roll it out properly.