DFF: AND CEREAL?!?!

[railenthe]

A/N:  I’m trying to remember how this even got started.  Somehow, two things have made it into head!canon:  bacon and cereal.  Because I’m currently having writer’s block on bacon, here’s cereal.

 

A Prize Inside Every Box
Author:  Railenthe
Rating: G
Warnings for:  Nothing, really, unless you’re averse to cute fluff and a quickly growing domestic!AU.

 

A Prize Inside Every Box

 

There was no other way to say it, really.  That Onion kid liked cereal.  He really liked cereal.  Especially the sweet kinds: those were his favorites.  VOID’s line was always a hit with him, the kind that had chocolate cereal pieces and marshmallows; those delicious, crunchy-yet-melt-in-your-mouth (and your bowl if you didn’t eat it fast enough—he never had that problem, though) marshmallows that didn’t exist anywhere outside of the cereal industry.

Light did not like cereal.

Actually, that was inaccurate.  Light liked cereal: plain, minimalist cereal.  Cereal made of shredded wheat twigs, or hot cereal.  (Though he couldn’t understand how that still counted as cereal.  It didn’t crunch, it wasn’t sweet, and it didn’t have cold milk!)  Light seemed to actively despise sweet cereals, and when it was his turn to do the shopping, he either watched Onion like a hawk, or he just carried him bodily past the aisle where VOID brand products were displayed.

Onion really hated it when Light did that.

Sometimes, the others would share their cereal with him—Zidane was especially nice about it.  But that was starting to get risky.  Light had this ability to be within three minutes of anywhere there could be “excessive” amounts of sugar…which meant anything sweeter than a glass of orange juice.  Which also meant that he usually didn’t get more than a bite of his favorite cereal before he had to do a quick switch for the salad on the other side of the table.

 

*_*_*

It wasn’t really a pounding at the door.  More like a tapping that was just loud enough to be above the ambient noise of the blitzball game on the fifty-seven inch LED TV.

Gabranth didn’t really feel like asking anyone else to get the door (they wouldn’t have done it anyway, not with the Aurochs up 3 goals—because how often did that even happen, anyway?).  He simply stood up and walked to the door, with its steady tmp tmp tmp barely audible over the shouts of “What kind of call was THAT?!” that drifted through the doorway behind him as he stepped into the foyer.

He opened the door and saw—nothing, actually.

“Um.  Ahem.”

The voice was coming from somewhere below.  When Gabranth looked down, he finally saw its source.  That’s that Onion lad, he thought.  Nice kid, stays with the uptight one, the one they all call Light.  Wait, what’s he doing here?  He finally noticed the kid was holding…a spoon?

“Can I help you?”

“Uh.  Um.  Yeah.  I heard from Z—uh, somebody we know, I mean.  You have that VOID cereal?  The kind with the crispy marshmallows?”

Gabranth looked behind him; the door behind him was securely closed.  “Yes…?”

“Uh, well, uh…”

“Yes?  Go on.”

“CanIpleasehavesomecereal?” he smashed the words together in a desperate question.

Silence.  Then:

“I get the feeling that you aren’t supposed to be here.  Are you?”

“Well…”

“And I get the feeling that no one knows you’re out of the house.”

The kid was quiet.

“It’s dangerous out here alone, you know.  And, as competent as you are with your sword…I rather doubt that skill will transfer to a spoon.”

The kid looked at his spoon—a silver thing with an impressive filigree handle—and flushed, as if wondering why he had chosen to step out of the house with that thing instead of his sword.  He flushed bright pink, and started looking furtively around him, in search of a quick way out.  He’d just settled on a way out when he noticed the door behind the Judge Magister open a bit.

“I was thinking about going in for a cup of tea,” he said with a nod at the space behind him.  “Would you like to stay outside, or would you rather come in?  If tea isn’t to your liking, I think I can find something you may like.  I hear you enjoy a certain brand of cereal?”

The kid’s face lit up with a huge smile.

 

*_*_*

Gabranth stood in the doorway, a cup of tea in one hand, as the Onion Knight attacked his favorite quarry, the elusive VOID cereal.  Chocolate cereal pieces, sweet crispy marshmallows, and the coldest milk you could get without having ice chips floating in it.  It really was tasty cereal.

“Isn’t that kid—” a low voice behind him asked suddenly.

“Yes, it is, and if you cause any trouble here, I will have to take action.”  He said it pleasantly enough, but Garland knew better—if you saw Gabranth smiling (or even if he merely sounded amused) it meant that someone close by was going to be knocked unconscious—and he’d seen it happen enough times to know that the Judge didn’t necessarily need that helmet to do some serious damage.

“If Light discovers this, I will make certain that the blame falls squarely upon your shoulders,” Garland threatened, and turned on his heel to leave the kitchen.

“You do that.  There will be time to deal with you afterward.”  Gabranth took a sip of tea as he listened to Garland’s muttering recede.

He looked back at the Onion kid then; the kid was now drinking the chocolaty milk from the bowl, the cereal finished.  He looked a bit embarrassed as he put the bowl back down and seemed to realize, for the first time, that he had an audience.

Gabranth just winked, and pantomimed clinking an invisible glass in a toast.

Onion grinned, a chocolate milk moustache on his upper lip

.