Title: Cooking Lessons
Summary: "You want us to bond … over cooking?"
Spoilers: None.
Pairing: None.
Disclaimer: The Charmed Ones belong to Brad Kern and the WB. I'm just playing in his sandbox.
Author's Note: The idea for this story came from a minor exchange at the end of "Charmed Again" ("You cook?" "Actually ... no.") but the timeline for this is mid-season four, post "Brain Drain" but before all the Phoebe/Cole/Source awkwardness. I haven't written Paige in a really long time, so feedback is much appreciated! Enjoy!

On some level, Paige Matthews knew she was dreaming. It was a lovely dream, though, and she didn't intend on giving it up easily. She and this really hot FedEx driver who came into the social services office every so often were orbing all over the city. Well, it wasn't exactly orbing; more like a combination of orbing and flying. She was thoroughly enjoying the feeling of the wind in her hair when her new big sister's voice cut right through the dream. "All right! Up and at 'em!"

Just like on television and in the movies, Paige watched her dream shatter. Gone were Hot Delivery Boy and the blue skies and the wispy clouds. All she saw instead was blackness. Groaning out loud, she turned over and tucked the covers underneath her chin. "Lady, it's Saturday and it's way too early to be flouncing on my bed like that."

"I beg to differ," Piper argued, a tiny smile on her face. "It's nine a.m., which is hardly 'way too early.'" She yanked the covers from her sister's shoulders, forced her hand around Paige's, and pulled. "Come on, let's go."

Paige shifted only enough to wrench her hand from Piper's. Sensing that her mission was going to prove more difficult than she'd originally planned, Piper hopped off the bed and opened the shades. Paige slung a hand over her eyes to protect them against the morning sunlight now flooding her room. "Why are you being so mean to me?" she asked, her voice verging on a whine.

"Oh, honey, you haven't seen me being mean yet," Piper replied brightly. "But fine. I'll give you a couple minutes to wake up a little. Come down to the kitchen when you're not so cranky." She giggled softly as she exited the bedroom and pulled the door closed behind her, leaving Paige to grumble under her breath while climbing out of bed. There was no going back to sleep now, that was for sure.

As she pulled on khakis and a sweater, Paige continued to mutter about how she never would have moved in if she thought her newfound sisters were going to barge into her room to wake her up for no discernible reason. After running a comb through her hair to tame the tangles that had taken over during the night and brushing her teeth, she headed downstairs. Unfortunately, her mood hadn't improved much. "There better be coffee waiting for me," she hollered from the staircase.

To Paige's mild excitement, Piper met her at the kitchen door with a steaming mug of coffee and a wide smile. "Cream and two sugars, right?"

Paige raised her eyebrows in surprise but quickly covered with a grateful smile. "Thank you," she said as she accepted the mug. Then she looked past her sister into the kitchen and saw that Piper had set an empty pot on the stove and piled all manner of raw ingredients up on the center island. "Um, Piper, what's going on? We're not doing potion quizzes again, are we? Because I kind of thought we were past that."

"We are past that," Piper said, raising her voice to be heard over her half-sister's protests. "We're not doing potion quizzes, I promise. Phoebe and Cole are off somewhere and Leo's got a thing with a charge, so it's just the two of us. I figured maybe we could hang out. You know, bond a little?" Her voice trailed off at the end of her sentence as she waved her hand at the food covering the island as if that would explain her intention.

A touched smile spread across Paige's face at the notion that Piper was trying to find a way to spend some one-on-one time with her, but as soon as she realized what her sister wanted to spend the day doing, her smile faded. "You want us to bond … over cooking? Piper, I know I've told you that I don't cook, but really, the extent of my stovetop cooking skills is pretty much grilled cheese sandwiches and tomato soup from a can."

Piper almost imperceptibly wrinkled her nose at her sister's inexperience with the culinary arts but she quickly covered, smiling at Paige. "That's perfectly fine. It's never too late to learn." Paige opened her mouth to protest, but before she could even get the words out, Piper took her hand and dragged her to the center island. "We're going to make cheese ravioli for dinner tonight."

"From scratch?" Paige asked, her eyes nervously falling on the tub of ricotta cheese and the two thawing packages of frozen spinach on the counter. "Completely? What's wrong with jarred sauce and frozen ravioli?"

"Because prepackaged is nowhere near as good as homemade," Piper replied, giving her sister a calm smile. It was only then that she saw the sheer panic in Paige's eyes, and she knew at once that Paige was afraid of somehow screwing up not only dinner but also this attempt at bonding. "Paige, relax."

Paige nodded and inhaled deeply. She didn't know why she so nervous anyway. It was just cooking, for crying out loud! She was a freaking Charmed One, and she handled far more difficult things than cooking on a daily basis. Although, she thought, vanquishing demons might actually be easier than throwing some eggs and flour and water together and somehow turning it into a classic Italian dinner.

"First thing we have to do is start the sauce," Piper said, her voice taking on an instructive tone. She set a skillet on the stove and turned the burner on medium. "Pour a couple tablespoons of oil into the skillet while I chop the garlic and onion, okay? Unless, of course, you want the onion."

Paige wrinkled her nose at the thought of her eyes watering this early in the morning. "By all means, take the onion. So once we infuse the oil with the garlic and onion, what are we going to do with it?"

Piper paused with her knife poised above the clove of garlic, eyeing her sister with a raised eyebrow. "We're going to stir it into the sauce. For someone who doesn't know anything about cooking, you know the terminology well enough."

"I said that I can't cook," Paige muttered self-consciously, "not that I didn't know anything about it." Piper gave her a look that clearly indicated she wanted to ask for an explanation, but she remained silent. Paige waited until Piper had moved onto the onion before scooping up the chopped garlic and dropping it into the simmering oil. "I used to watch my mom cook."

Piper looked up long enough to meet her half-sister's gaze. "Your mom liked to cook?" she asked, a tiny smile on her lips.

"I don't know that I'd say she liked it, exactly, but she was pretty good at it." She shrugged as Piper threw the tiny cubes of onion into the oil with the garlic. The resulting aroma filled the kitchen and, for a split second, Paige was transported back to her mother's kitchen. She inhaled deeply through her nose. "I never realized how much I loved her meals until …" Instead of finishing the thought, grasped the wooden spoon and shifted the onion and garlic in the oil.

Piper stepped closer to Paige but then stopped short. She wanted to offer comfort but she didn't want to intrude, either. Damn this awkwardness, she silently grumbled. She settled for giving her sister a small, sympathetic smile. "It's the little things," she agreed, her voice soft. "Like … even though Prue and Phoebe's bickering annoyed the crap out of me, sometimes I find myself missing it."

Paige arched an eyebrow and grinned playfully. "If you want bickering, I'm sure we could arrange that."

"I'm trying to bond here, and you get snotty with me?" Piper asked with faux incredulity.

Paige's face blanched. "I-I was just … I mean, this is how it works right? This sister thing? Snarking back and forth at each other? Because that's what you and Phoebe do and that's kind of how it was working before--"

"Paige?" Piper waved her hands to interrupt her sister's rambling. "I'm just playing with you."

"Oh." After taking a deep breath to calm her nerves, Paige shot Piper an uneasy smile. "Right. I knew that. Sorry." Piper grinned and pulled a can opener from one of the utensil drawers. Paige cleared her throat and refocused her attention on the tomato sauce Piper was beginning to put together.

After Piper had emptied a can of diced tomatoes and a couple cans of tomato paste into the deep stock pot she'd set on the stove, she instructed Paige to thin the mixture out by pouring two tomato paste cans' worth of water into it. Paige did so and then reached for the spices. Piper's first instinct was to reach out and grab Paige's hand to stop her, but she managed to silence her internal chef and let her sister do what she wanted. She watched with slight amazement as Paige sprinkled oregano, basil, and thyme into the pot. "How'd you know what to put in?" she asked, tossing in a couple dashes of salt and pepper.

"My mom used to make a mean meat sauce," Paige answered, her eyes sparkling with nostalgia. "When I was little, she'd let me throw the spices in. She always had to balance the flavor later, though, so you might not want to take my word for it."

Piper giggled as she removed the fragrant, simmering oil from the heat. "Don't worry about it. We'll taste-test once we get the oil incorporated." She walked the pan to the sink and carefully picked out the garlic chunks. The flavor of the garlic was the important thing, and she very much disliked biting into a hunk of the stuff. Once the oil was garlic-chunk-free, she added it to the sauce and stirred it in with the wooden spoon.

After the oil was fully incorporated, she gathered some of the sauce onto the spoon and held it out for Paige to taste. "Now, keep in mind that it still has to simmer for a bit and the meatballs will add to the flavor …"

Paige raised an amused eyebrow. "So basically, even if it tastes like crap now, don't worry, because it might not taste like crap later?"

"Pretty much," Piper said with a light giggle. "What you're tasting for now is to make sure the spices blended properly. That you can't taste one over the other."

Paige nodded to let Piper know that she understood as she took the spoon from her. Though the sauce was missing something--the meat flavors, maybe?--it reminded her so much of her mother's that she smiled. "I take it the sauce is fine?" Piper asked, watching her sister's expression carefully.

"Yeah," Paige agreed, her voice soft.

Piper moved closer to Paige and rested her hand on her shoulder. "Familiar?" When Paige nodded, Piper smiled. She slipped the spoon from Paige's hand and took a taste off of it as well. For someone who was just used to tossing in spices for someone else to fix later, Paige had managed a pretty good balance. She could tell, even without the full benefit of simmering, that this was going to be one delicious tomato sauce.

"Now we move on to the pasta," Piper said, putting a lid on the sauce pot. She crossed the room and grabbed the container of flour from its shelf in the cabinet. "Pasta dough itself isn't hard," she continued, shifting the flour can in her arms so she could grab the eggs from the fridge, "but lasagna and ravioli dough can be tricky. If it's too dry, it's going to get holes when we run it through the press."

"And holes are bad."

"Hard to make pockets with holes in the dough." Piper grinned at her sister as she pulled her rings off her fingers and stowed them in her pocket. "This is where things get messy."

Paige watched with slightly raised eyebrows as Piper dumped a small pile of flour onto the counter, used her fist to make a small depression in the mound, and cracked four eggs into the resulting hole. She used one of the egg-shell halves to add water from the tap to the mix and then began working it all together with her fingers.

Piper looked up at Paige and snickered at the look of mild disgust on her sister's face. "That's … kind of gross," Paige said.

"Yeah, kind of," Piper agreed. When she had the dough kneaded into a workable lump, she pushed it towards her sister. "Here, pull and press. Got the idea?"

Paige nodded and took over kneading the dough so that Piper could wash the sticky mess from her hands. "Is it supposed to be kind of tacky?" Paige asked, rubbing her fingers together.

"For now, yes. We're going to take down the stickiness with flour, but we have to do it gradually." She walked back to the center island, drying her hands on a dish towel, which she then slung over her shoulder. Again, Paige had a mental flash of her mother.

"What is it?" Piper asked, frowning at the look on Paige's face.

"Nothing," Paige replied, forcing a smile. "We have to add the flour gradually because we can make a wet dough dry, but we can't make a dry dough wet, right?"

"Right," Piper said. She wrinkled her brow at her sister. "You sure you're okay?"

"Yeah, I'm fine," Paige said, shaking her head to stave off her sister's concern. "I just haven't cooked with anyone since … in a long time."

Piper gave Paige a sympathetic smile as she wrapped her arm around her shoulders. "I'm sorry. I wouldn't have made you do this if I thought--"

"No, really, it's okay," Paige insisted. "I'm having a good time, promise. I think I might even learn to like this cooking thing."

"Okay, I don't believe that last part, but I do believe the rest of it," Piper said. She gave Paige's shoulders a light squeeze and then got back down to business. As Paige slowly incorporated more flour into the dough, Piper went to the pantry and dug out the pasta press. It had been a couple months since she'd last used it; Prue was the one who'd adored homemade pasta.

By the time Piper had unearthed the press and set it up on the counter, Paige had worked the dough to the perfect consistency. "All right, now what?" she asked.

Piper indicated the press. "Cut a slab off the dough about half an inch thick," she explained. After Paige had done as instructed, Piper walked her through the gradual thinning and stretching of the slab until it was the proper length and thickness. "Think you got that?"

"Two clicks, two clicks, three clicks," Paige recited, counting how many times she needed to turn the knob on the press to thin the dough properly.

"Good girl," Piper smiled. "You work on the dough while I mix the filling, okay?"

Paige nodded her assent. She kept one eye on her own work and kept the other on Piper, wanting to see what she was doing. Piper dumped the whole tub of ricotta into a bowl, threw a couple handfuls of grated parmesan cheese, and covered the whole thing with the spinach. Then she took a wooden spoon to the mixture and incorporated it all together.

After the entire lump of dough was pressed, Piper taught Paige how to form the ravioli pocket around a small spoonful of the cheese filling and seal it with the tines of a fork. Between the two of them, every last strip of dough was filled in almost record time.

"The sauce still has to simmer a bit," Piper said as she arranged the freshly made ravioli on cookie sheets lined with wax paper and sprinkled with flour. She stowed the cookie sheets in the freezer and turned around in time to see Paige pop a small chunk of raw pasta dough into her mouth. Almost instantly, Paige wrinkled her nose. Piper grinned at her sister. "Doesn't exactly taste how you imagined, does it?"

"No, not really," Paige replied, forcing the dough down in a hard swallow. "It's official: pasta is much better when it's cooked."

Piper chuckled and crossed back to the counter. She wrinkled her brow before swiping a finger down Paige's cheek. "You had a little bit of flour," she said by way of explanation.

Paige smiled, her cheeks flushing as she self-consciously brushed her hands over her face. "So, um … we still have meatballs to make, don't we?"

"Yes," Piper said with a laugh. "You want to do it or do you want to assist?"

"I think I want to do it." This was her moment to make both Piper and her mother proud. It was a tiny moment, in the grand scheme of things, but it was still a chance.

"All right," Piper exclaimed, clapping her hands and grinning. "I'll talk you through it."

-----

The second Phoebe set foot in the Manor, it was obvious that her sisters had been extremely busy in her absence. The entire ground floor smelled like an Italian restaurant! The aroma of the garlic and herbs and simmering tomato sauce hung in the air and filled the space with warmth and a sense of comfort.

She followed the aroma to the kitchen but just as she was about to announce her presence, a giggle from the other side of the door stopped her in her tracks. She pushed the door open a crack, peeked around, and smiled instantly at what she saw. Piper and Paige were standing at the center island, deep in conversation.

"So I went to kick the ball," Paige was saying, animatedly waving her hands as she told the story, "and I kicked the other girl's foot instead. She went down, I went down. She was fine, but I couldn't stand on my right foot. That's right, on the second day of gym class, I sprained my ankle playing indoor soccer. Because I am a klutz."

Piper pressed a hand over her mouth to muffle her laughter. "And that's not even the worst of it!" Paige continued. "No one was home to pick me up, so I had to walk around all day with an ice pack and in each class, I had to ask for an extra chair to prop up my ankle so it wouldn't be a balloon by the time I got the doctor's. When you're twelve, that crap is traumatizing."

Phoebe chuckled but she remained in the doorway, not wanting to interrupt her sisters. The two of them hadn't had much of a chance to spend time together--just the two of them--without some kind of demonic crisis popping up. Although the demon bashing forced the three of them to quickly learn how to work together, it didn't exactly leave a lot of room for the human, emotional side of getting to know one another.

Once Piper had recovered from her giggle fit, Phoebe decided it was time to let her sisters know she was home. She stepped into the kitchen proper with a wide smile on her face. "It smells delicious in here, Piper. Please tell me I'm smelling dinner."

"Hey, Phoebe," Piper said, greeting her sister. "Yes, you are smelling tonight's dinner. Paige and I made ravioli."

Upon the realization that Piper and Paige had likely spent the whole day together cooking, Phoebe's smile widened. Food was Piper's way of reaching out to other people. "I didn't know you could cook," she said to Paige.

"I can't," Paige answered with a self-deprecating shrug. "Not really."

"Nonsense," Piper gently argued, nudging her sister's shoulder. "You did pretty well today for someone who can't cook."

Paige looked down at her hands, blushing and trying to hide a smile. Phoebe and Piper exchanged a grin over their sister's head. "Well," Phoebe offered, indicating the grocery bag in her hand, "since the two of you made dinner, that makes it all the more appropriate that I bought stuff for hot fudge sundaes for dessert."

"I am so going to gain thirteen hundred pounds living here," Paige muttered under her breath.

"Oh, don't worry about that," Piper snickered, wrapping her arm around her sister's shoulders. "The running around after demons thing is fantastic exercise."

Paige laughed. Yeah, Piper had a point. She took a seat in the breakfast nook as Piper and Phoebe began collecting plates and silverware to set the dinner table. "Paige, can you stir the sauce?" Piper called over her shoulder as she and Phoebe disappeared into the dining room.

"Sure!" Paige hopped up from her chair and headed to the stove. As she turned the wooden spoon in a figure-eight motion, she listened to the sounds of Phoebe and Piper catching up after the day apart. When she noticed that they sounded just how she and Piper had sounded earlier in the day, she couldn't hide her smile. "Maybe this sister thing won't be so bad after all," she mumbled to herself.