A/N: Orginally posted on A03 as a holiday!fic. Trying out for the first time by posting a chapter and wow I don't get this site at all.
All aboard the Sugar Rush Express; it will make your teeth rot. (You're welcome.)
"Umm… Light?"
"What?"
"You haven't touched your chocolate ganache tart."
Lightning stood up from the Christmas tree, adjusting the glass ornaments from falling since Serah was always careless with them. She eyed her sister with passive indifference and followed her delicate finger pointed to the said sugar infused substance, sitting innocently on the fine china.
"You can have it. Not really hungry." She replied and went back to work, adding on a chain of golden stars amongst the branches, leaving Serah gawking at her from the moment Lightning turned away.
You see, sisters share a really close bond. They know what makes you happy, what makes you sad, what irritates you, what motivates you to pursue your goals and things you genuinely love. It took Serah a long time to truly understand the emotional struggle Lightning had to go through, sacrifice her childhood for her, working into the late hours to support them both, (even to point of her sister choosing this ridiculous code name!), and unfortunately, her seething hate of her fiancé, Snow. However, if someone were to ask the first and most important thing they should know about her beloved sister:
Lightning Farron likes sweets. A lot.
Since it was the start of the festive month of December, Serah wanted to start it off with a little treat she bought from her friend's patisserie before splurging on gift shopping. However, for Lightning to refuse such a delectable treat was just impossible to believe.
It was like the chaos leaked from Valhalla and replaced her real sister with a clone without the sweet tooth.
In the midst of train wreck of a conversation, Yeul quietly stirred the mix of cocoa powders and steamed milk from the counter.
"WHAT? NO WAY! I ADDED THE STRAWBERRY ROSE FOR HER AND SHE STILL REFUSED?"
"Noel, I can't hear myself think." Serah pleaded.
The frustrated baker failed his arms in the air, and then ran his hands through his hair, groaning. Serah had been visiting the patisserie frequently during closing hours after hearing someone downright rejected his handcrafted delicacies over and over again.
That someone being Lightning Farron.
"Serah, it's been 3 weeks! How could she - hey, do you smell-"
"Hot chocolate with Paddra's cocoa beans for your convenience." Two deep red mugs filled with rich steaming liquid topped with large artisan marshmallows were place on the table between him and Serah.
"Wow, smells great Yeul! My mouth is already watering from these marshmallows."
"I'm pleased that you like them." Yeul smiled softly. Turning to Noel, she poked his messy hair. "Now I hoped that you have the hazelnuts in the order."
"Heh heh… I'm getting there…" Noel replied sheepishly. That only earned him a slap on the head and Yeul walking briskly back to the counter to clean off the stains on the tray. "But the papou fruit puree arrived yesterday so we don't need to worry about that!"
"I heard there is a shortage of hazelnuts this year." Serah inquired. "Isn't peppermint chocolate a popular holiday flavour?"
Noel turned toward her. "Your right, but we got a change in an order a while ago requesting some hazelnut pastries."
"Oh? It's a little odd, but I guess just some people really adore certain flavours…"
"Actually… I think that's the only flavour he likes."
Serah was absent mindedly poking the marshmallow in the hot chocolate until whatever Noel just said just registered in her mind. When Noel noticed her apparent silence, he addressed her confusion.
"That order came from the royal family apparently." He chuckled. "They have their Dynasty Ball around this time of the year and we've been asked to cater for it. Apparently someone is fond of semi-sweet desserts."
"But, your hazelnut pastries aren't really that sweet at all."
"That's because people like you don't appreciate its tasty flavour. Too much sugar used to sweeten it to the point you can't taste hazelnut anymore."
Serah wasn't really going to argue with that. She couldn't have her regular hazelnut latte or any coffee based drink without the whipped cream topping when she had to teach a bunch a tired school children every morning. Sure hazelnut was a nice flavour but for something both the Farron sisters agreed on, they liked their desserts sweet.
"I'm not being a bother now am I? It sounds like you guys have lots of orders to take care of."
"Naw, that's ok Serah, why don't you stay a little longer? The subway runs 24hr in here, so getting from Insomnia back to Bodhum shouldn't be that hard. Plus, Lightning's working late right? She's not waiting at home." Noel reached for the hot chocolate. "You can't let this go to waste can you?"
"Certainly she can't," Yeul returned with two plates: one with filled with a miscellaneous mix of cookies and one with a single slice of banana loaf. "After all, who could resist?"
"Lightning apparently…" Serah droned out.
"Ah, so I've heard." Yeul broke off a piece of the banana loaf. "Has she received cavities?"
"Absolutely not. That girl can handle her sugar better than I can." Serah mumbled while picking what seemed to be gingerbread from the cookie pile. "This behaviour started when I bought your new chocolate ganache tarts."
Throughout the last 3 weeks, Serah kept her eyes on her sister, trying her best not to make it obvious since Lightning had the intuition of a hawk. It seemed that work was well as it usually was. Adomar didn't seem to notice anything wrong with Lightning, and Fang has been picking on her like it was no one's business during the break. Serah purposefully left some of the remaining pastries in the fridge and peppermint candy around the house, but all have been left untouched, and perfectly sealed among the wrappers.
"Yeah, since then I made all her favourite sweets: raspberry macarons, fresh fruit tarts, apple turnovers, peach galettes, papou cheesecake you name it! She even down rightly reject the strawberry mousse pudding I made 3 days ago arghhhh!" Noel groaned. "Serah, she's not still mad that I gave her gyshal green salad instead of the salted caramel chocolate bunny from last Easter is she?"
The two other girls laughed. "I'm fairly certain she's not." Serah replied while taking bites off her treat.
"Umm…" Yeul started, "…although this is entirely unfair to pin point the blame on someone, do you think Snow had contributed anything to this odd behavior?"
"Surprisingly, no." Serah dusted off the crumbs from her coat.
When she eventually concluded that Snow might have said something ridiculous in front of Lightning (or at least had done something atrocious), her fiancé surprising informed her that her sister ask him to do a favour recently.
"Did you screw up along the way?"
"Aww, have a little faith in your hero!"
"Snow…"
"Ok, ok… maybe a little, but it's alright, she got what she wanted and everything went totally a-ok!"
Serah broke pieces from the marshmallow before consuming them in the frothy drink. Huh, well so much for that.
"Maybe… a change in the environment… has changed her behavior?" Yeul inquired.
"Adomar said work was fine as usual, she's just been deported to Insomnia more frequently for the past two years. Environment has been literally the same."
"Ah, but my visions tell me there's something more to that."
"Yeul, physic powers can't solve our problems here." Noel bit into a chocolate drizzled cookie. He only earned another slap from Yeul, who focused her attention on Serah.
"I don't mean the physical environment, I mean… could there have been a change with the people she worked with or like a change in the atmosphere of the work place?"
Serah was already about to reject Yeul's proposal, until something clicked in her head. The Guardian Corps building was decorated with Christmas festivities, and as Adomar liked to put it, making sure they put PSICOM's sparkling reindeer to shame. Lightning wasn't in the refresh room as she usually was during the breaks either.
But Serah doubted that could have been the case. Lightning Farron was certainly not the type to be spreading holiday cheer with random people, let alone people she already knew. It took 2 years of her rejection to Fang's request to accompany her while singing on karaoke machine until she suddenly gave in one day.
Loud knocking against the doors interrupted her before she had a chance to reply.
"Who could that be? We're closed at this hour." Yeul stood up before being promptly stopped by Noel.
"You might want to sit down from this, and maybe stay far away as possible." With that he carefully strode to the entrance and opened the door.
Eyeing Noel curiously, the two ladies watched as Noel prepared a slight battle stance to block whatever he expecting from the other side. He was forcefully knocked down by a barging stranger and dragged back up by a pair of thin arms which belonged to a strange man with the strangest chocobo yellow hair Serah had ever seen.
"NOEL! HEY BUDDY HOW HAVE YA BEEN! OH MAN I MISSED YOU MY BRO-"
"Get off me, are you drunk Argentum?" Noel struggled out of his grasp.
"Hee hee, well maybe it will do you some good by making sure that frown of yours doesn't stay permanent!"
"I'm going to kick your-"
Serah was pretty sure Noel muttered some colourful words, unintelligent to Yeul and her ears. Though watching the events unfold, Noel seemed to finally agree to retrieve this fellow -Argentum was it?- His regular 'midnight snack', despite it only being half past nine.
"I really doubt this may it, but could it be that Lightning has become…self-conscious?"
"Oh, that would actually be pretty funny-." She laughed, taking notice that the stranger was smirking at them and dismissed the gesture, until upon realizing something critical.
Lightning was never one to talk about her own problems. She always put Serah first, making sure she lived a comfortable life and preparing her a good future. Whatever Serah's interests were, she made sure her younger sister have access to achieve her goals first. Which lead to her current predicament:
What… if Lightning… is sick?!
Lightning was also the kind of person who wasn't one to show weakness, even in front of those closest to her. Serah didn't remember if there was a time where Lightning ever relaxed or treated herself properly.
Oh no, does she have a tooth infection? Her jaw didn't look swollen…
Was the injury from the summer camping trip hurt her immune system? Is that why she's losing appetite?
Is she depressed because she can't eat her sweets?
Oh dear Etro…
What if…
What if…
"WHAT IF SHE HAS DIABETES?!"
Yeul almost dropped her banana loaf while being taken aback by her sudden outburst. While looking frantically around trying to find how she could have been so cruel to pester such delectable dessert to add her sister's 'suffering', she caught a pair of amused eyes looking straight at her. The chocobo haired man invited himself to stroll over to their table.
"Good evening ladies," he addressed in a suave voice, "I can't help but hear that a fair maiden may be critically ill?"
"Hi Prompto." Yeul addressed softly. "I see you failed to wear your vest properly again."
The stranger, Prompto, pouted his lips childishly. "Why does everyone want to pick on me today? Look, I asked Iggy to sew on the pocket where the pocket should be!"
Unamused, Yeul bluntly replied. "I meant it's winter. Where is your jacket? If you get sick again, you'll have to ask your friend Ignis for his peppermint tea as we have run out until the holidays are over."
"Oh well, I'm not the one who is sick now am I?" He stared at Serah meaningfully.
She fidgeted with her fingers. "Well… not exactly." When he kept quiet, she continued. "My sister Lightning hasn't behaving as she usually does."
Serah didn't expect Prompto's playful smirk to drop from his face and now there is what seems to be genuine concern on his face. "Man, that sucks. I wish I could do something to help."
"Ah, but Lightning isn't really an easy person to help since she's hard to get to know." Yeul replied, offering him to help himself to the cookie plate.
Prompto gratefully helped himself to some chocolate fudge cookies. "Oh? So then what would you suggest is the first thing someone should know about this sister of yours?"
"She doesn't really look like the kind of person, but Lightning likes sweet. A lot." She replied bluntly, like she has repeated it many times before. "It's a bit of a funny pun since her real name is Éclair."
"Unfortunately, knowing that doesn't help since she actually stopped eating sweets for a bit of a while now. She's known for very high sugar tolerance according to Serah." Yeul added.
Acknowledging Yeul's remark, Prompto turned his attention to Serah. "Éclair, huh?" he snickered. "I can only imagine with hair pink like as the strawberries on my fresh fruit tart, pretty face like yours as sweet as sugar, I think I could just have diabetes just by looking at-"
Prompto was clearly prevented from sweet talking more with a loud smack to the back of his head by Noel.
"Shut up idiot, she has a fiancé." He place a large box of pastries in Prompto's hand.
"You're no fun…" Prompto pouted, but before leaving, he turned to his friend. "You know, I don't think Serah's sister is sick of your desserts Noel…" he said in between bites. He gave a dramatic pause and looked towards Serah.
"It might just be that she's just found something much sweeter." He wiggled his eyebrows.
Serah wasn't sure if he was hinting at something or just being, what Lightning liked to call, annoying, but nonetheless Prompto was hit on the head by Noel again. Prompto waved goodbye to the small company and left the patisserie without snatching a couple more cookies from Yeul's generous offering.
"I wondered what he meant Lightning found something sweeter…" Yeul mumbled, her plate empty of the loaf that once occupied it.
The three of them sat quietly, pondering their thoughts until Noel cried in sheer terror, wondering if there was a competitor trying to put his patisserie out of business.
"After all we've been through Lightning! How could you?"
Throughout his agony, Serah thought she heard Prompto's mischievous snickering from the distance.
A/N: I actually intended this to be a one shot , but anything with Prompto can't last in one chapter. So... looks like I have to continue it.
Thanks for reading, please leave a review!