A Spoonful Of Sugar

Words: 1,363
Genre: Humour/Romance (fluff)
Pairing(s): 12!Squall/9!Cloud
Notes: Canon, set before KH1. The 'pineapple' prompt from the amazingly amazing egginabasket whom I cannot live without. Srsly. YOU LOVE FLUFF SO FLUFF I GIVE. D:
Summary: All they ever wanted was a clear sky and a summer that never ended.
Warning: Le none.
Rated: G

Summer sun was always welcome in Radiant Garden, because it brought with it the lingering smell of the delightfully saline ocean as well as the tangy taste of exotic tropical fruits. The children they were, they spent hours running together beneath the lazy sun, glad that their lessons were finished for the year and happier still that the days were long and bright. They always, always resolved to sleep in late but somehow they seemed to rise just an hour or so after the sun itself had.

Their parents wished it were that easy to get them up on a regular day.

Kite flying, swimming, fishing (but only the boys seemed to ever catch anything); the daring did a spot of surfing before they got too scared and returned (with the smug air of a very-learned-indeed scholar) to shore, and then they played tag all over the coastal city before their breaths grew quick and their limbs dragged along the ground. Play time was never over, though, and they soon enough found a sturdy wooden gazebo (raised on stilts to avoid the tide in the mornings) on the beach to clamber in. Wide-eyed, they’d start pretending to be Merlin and Cid and would fiddle around with seashells and pretend they were Very Important Gummi Parts.

One day, one of them had found a ‘mega monster great massive’ seashell (which was big, but only just as big as a small sand bucket and not a coffee table [Aerith had just learnt the word as they would have liked you to believe) and with the ‘oohs’ and ‘ahhs’ of tiny delinquents out to make mischief in the summer, they huddled around it, tracing the perfect spikes of the shell and whispering conspiratorially to one another about the price it would fetch for such a unique colour. Cloud was the first one to put the shell to his ear and close his eyes, murmuring that it was supposed to contain the sound of the ocean. They followed suit soon after, quietly passing it along as the sun started to droop sleepily in the red sky.

Afterwards, one of them would ask if it was the sound of the ocean they were hearing, or the sound of a family of hermit crabs.

Almost immediately, they would scuttle around, setting the shell down and trying to poke out the family of hermit crabs. Squall was the one who took the thing with his bare hands and shook, but the youngest put the end to that by saying they might get a ‘head egg’ and then would never leave the shell.

Those long summer days faded into night, like all days did, but the shell was their secret and that wooden gazebo with its roof made of paopu tree leaves was their hideaway.

Summer brought with it swim suits and beach balls and fishing rods, but the girls always wanted to build sand castles and the boys always wanted to catch fish. Compromise was always difficult, but they spent time together like they always did (because they were a Gang and Gangs hung out together even if girls were silly and just wanted to play in sand all the time and boys were stupid and didn’t want to build sand forts with knights and princesses when they were all the way by the sea) but compromise was compromise. When the sun was at a just-nice position in the sky and it was a cool day, the girls left to play kings and princesses with a whole beach full of sand and the boys grabbed their buckets and fishing rods and marched off to the pier.

They set up their lines, hooking small cut up pieces of prawns and worms as their bait before they dropped the sinkers into the water on either side of the small pier and leaned against each other, dangling their feet over the edge and in the warm water.

They would chat lazily under the clear sky as they wasted their time there, with their sun hats on whenever it got too hot, or with an ice cream in their other hand when the ice cream man came. They would watch their fat and colourful floats bobbing in and out of the water, reeling in their lines now and again to a fish (or two, if they were lucky. They usually weren’t).

Merlin himself would join them halfway through summer. (No one knew what he did the first half of the season and for some odd reason, no one really minded not knowing. They were probably safer that way.) With the gusto of a hippie and the wisdom of a Bohemian Rhapsodist, he would conjure his foldable beach chair and laze about in his really-very-big swimming trunks, with a large pair of outdated sunglasses over his eyes and lotion slapped on his exposed skin. He never brought his hat along because it was always too windy. What he did bring, however, was an interesting story or two, a tip that would help the boys catch fish better (sometimes he’d even help them out and magickify the fish to them), the occasional snoring from beneath his fluffy moustache and, of course, the odd snack.

And by ‘odd snack’, Merlin really did bring ‘odd’ snacks.

The boys chose never to comment on that one time when he conjured a dragon fruit-calamari-banana-avocado cocktail (which tasted rather nutty, actually) or the other time when he produced a plate of sliced seasonal tomatoes with salted kelp. They were wise enough to soon request their own snacks, however, and Merlin wizened up by reducing his rather interesting combos (he still conjured them now and again just to enlighten the boys on his experience as a gourmet) and offering them different kinds of fruit instead.

It was in this usual wont that they were acquainted with the ‘pineapple’, and a particularly vicious species, at that.

The sun was already starting its dip in the sky, and Squall had just taken a swig of ice cream soda when he heard a strange noise from beside him, followed by a pained whimper.

He turned around in worry, coming nose to nose with a red-faced Cloud whose eyes were watering, his trembling hands raised up to gesticulate but failing as he sucked harshly on his pursed lips.

“What? What’s wrong?” Squall panicked.

Cloud choked a bit, and then hiccupped.

“FRAWR. N-NEED. WGGHHHR. NOW.”

“Wh-what?”

“SOUR,” Cloud clarified, all but screaming as his eyes completely misted over. In that instant, he had swallowed his pineapple. His eyes almost rolled into his head.

“MY MOUTH. BURNING. WATER. NOW,” he squeaked.

“O-okay! W-wait!”

Squall grabbed frantically at his bottle of ice cream soda but it was already empty. Agitated, he whipped around to ask Merlin for help but he was dead asleep and no one could wake Merlin up. No one. He fumbled with the few bottles around them but to no avail. Crestfallen, he looked up at Cloud with apprehensive eyes.

“There’s no more water!”

Cloud hiccupped again. And then whimpered.

“Uh, uh, uh,” Squall was trying to think, and think fast. Eventually, it came to him. He grabbed his friend by the shoulders, and as Cloud’s lips parted to suck in some air, he covered Cloud’s mouth with his own and slipped his tongue inside, resting it between Cloud’s burning lips.

Needless to say, the younger boy was quite taken aback… to put it lightly.

When Squall pulled away after a time (basically when Cloud stopped flailing due to the sourness of the pineapple just so that he could be awe-stricken and shocked at Squall’s solution) he looked at Cloud straight in the eye, still apprehensive and unaware that the red covering his friend’s face was no longer as a result of that piece of fruit.

“I just drank cold ice cream soda! Is your mouth better now?” Squall demanded in earnest, worried still.

It took a lot of strength on Cloud’s behalf as he averted his gaze to muster the, “… a little bit,” he muttered embarrassedly in response.

Merlin's snort and roll in his foldable chair was completely ignored.