Title: Pantry Raid
Fandom: Fire Emblem (13) – Awakening
Rating: G
Length: 910 Words
Content Notes: Harmless fun involving candy, dominoes, and fluff.
Author Notes: Safe to assume that Gaius and Maribelle have A Support, but not S.
Summary: Gaius and Maribelle play for all the sweets.

* * * *

It had started as a big mistake, Gaius had to admit. He had been only paces from his objective, and ... she had foiled him. Her. Maribelle. Again. To be fair, he had been in her house – and in her pantry, to boot. The information he had – acquiring it from Lissa might not have been the smartest method, he realized – suggested that she had gone to the capital to serve as advocate for several individuals being brought before the courts, as she frequently did, but that might have been a fabrication intended to catch him, and, if he had been paying attention, he might have suspected that, but —

The sweets. They called to him. They affected his perceptions. They poked big holes in his good sense. And boy, did Maribelle have sweets – peppermint sticks, sweet buns, and those rose-flavored soft candies that he had never seen before meeting her, among many others. He had to sample her stockpile, no question about it. Granted, it had presented a dilemma, considering that he had promised her to be less of a thief and more of a ... non-thief, but she had candy. Candy. And stealing candy, by his (unique) logic, did not represent the same type of crime as stealing, say, money.

At first, Maribelle thought he might be a simple burglar. To be fair, that was exactly what he was, but – she used her parasol to smack him about the head until he turned to face her, and she realized his identity. She could have apologized for beating him up, seeing as to how they had been friends for years, but, instead, she made him sit and listen to a long lecture about decorum, propriety, and a number of other words that he allowed to pass into one ear and out the other. He considered different methods of escape as she droned about being a good friend, and his brain stumbled upon a great idea.

He interrupted her to offer to gamble for everything he had originally come to steal. That took her aback, and she blinked a couple of times before the challenge sunk into her head, her face assuming a playful expression that he rarely got to see, considering that she spent most of her time – around him, at least – being either self-righteous or disgusted ... or absorbed by Lissa. That happened frequently, too. ... But back to the game. He offered to let her pick it, since he had a broad knowledge of several kinds of gambling, and he had faith that she was not about to pull a Virion and trick him.

Dominoes – Feroxi rules. No problem. He had played that game at more pubs than he could count, and, more often than not, he had won ... and won big. (Valmese rules – polyominoes, they called their version – presented another story, one that generally had no happy endings, especially if Virion got involved.) He accepted, and they made a start of it in her study, setting up on one of the big tables she had there. Feroxi rules had them playing to the best of nine – blocking, as simple as could be, but he had to mind his choices, since it was possible to win at blocking in a very small number of moves.

Click. He managed to beat her the first time. Easily. Too easily, he decided. Maribelle had a good head on her shoulders, and being a student of the laws had multiplied her deviousness by a factor he could only imagine. He let down his guard on purpose to test her methods, and she beat him, but the pattern she put down seemed ... too predictable. A feint inside a feint? That made him sweat ... a little. Only a little. He had to have confidence. Click. She beat him again, but using a different pattern. Shades of Virion. Had she accepted because she stood a good chance of humiliating him?

They continued. Four and four. One more win, and either one of them could win it all. He had managed to reach all the way to the bottom of his repertoire, but Maribelle represented a formidable opponent, a situation made slightly galling by the fact that she seemed amused by the whole business. He was giving himself a headache cooking up strategies to keep her at bay, and she had the nerve to see humor in it. And all that candy on the line! He had to succeed, or he might never live it down. Sweat gathered on his palms. His teeth seemed to clench themselves. One more move, and – !

Click. Did he overthink it, or – ? But she did not put a domino down. Instead, she said, shaking her head, "I appreciate the game, Gaius, but did you consider asking me for candy? I have no problem when it comes to sharing." True, that had not occurred to him, but – he felt foolish. A little. Very little. ... Maybe more than a little. Picking up on that, she observed, resting her chin on her white-gloved knuckles, "Come on down to the kitchen with me. What better time than the middle of the night for a snack, hmm?" No sense disagreeing, especially seeing as to how her next move might have –

He put that out of his mind, and, in return, she pretended not to notice him lining his pockets – those rose-flavored soft candies, of course – before taking his leave.

END.