Disclaimer: Tales of the Abyss belongs to Namco-Bandai, not me.

Authors' Note: I wrote this forever ago, and the prompt was "spaghetti." If you read, please review!

Worms

After the kidnapping, Luke didn't really want to eat.

Or, rather, he was very selective about the foods he would eat. For instance, he didn't like squishy things. He preferred chicken over beef. And if you tried to feed him soup, he would happily knock the bowl around, splash hot soup all over himself, and then start to panic because it was burning him. Feeding post-kidnapping Luke was always like waging war, and unless Guy put careful thought and planning into it, he was sure to end up with a mess.

Still, it was imperative that Luke try new things - or, well, things he hadn't had since the kidnapping, in hopes that something might jog his memory. Besides, it wasn't as if he could eat chicken sandwiches forever. Eventually he would get sick of them, and if no one knew what other kinds of food Luke liked, they'd have to cook one hundred things at once just to find something suitable. It was for this reason that Guy suggested Luke try spaghetti for lunch one day - spaghetti with tomato sauce, to give it more flavor.

This turned out to be a mistake.

When Guy set the plate in front of the ten-year-old, Luke merely stared at it for a few moments, his expression blank. Finally, he looked back up at Guy, and announced plainly, "Worms. Bloody worms."

Luke looked so serious that Guy actually laughed, sitting down across from Luke. "No, Luke," he said patiently. "Spaghetti. It's a kind of pasta. And that sauce is tomato sauce."

Luke looked back down at his plate, frowning before he poked at some of the noodles gently with his finger. "Hot worms," he decided. "Hot, bloody worms."

"Yes, it's hot, but no, those aren't worms. They're noodles." Standing up again, Guy rounded the table to pick up Luke's fork, twirling some of the noodles around the prongs. "Here, try some."

Luke closed his mouth tightly, shaking his head. Guy sighed. "Come on, Luke, just one bite. If you don't like it, you can have something else." Luke shook his head again. "Luke . . ."

"It's worms!" Luke said loudly, turning his head away as he spoke so Guy couldn't shove the forkful in. Not that Guy would have - he didn't want to risk Luke choking - but Luke didn't know that. "I don't wanna eat worms! Worms are gross!"

"They're not worms!"

"Worms!"

Guy set the fork down, pondering how best to handle the situation. Guy knew that Luke knew that the pasta wasn't really made out of worms, however it appeared to him at first; however, Guy also knew that Luke knew that if he resisted long enough, he'd be given a chicken sandwich just so that he ate something and didn't starve. That wasn't a route that Guy wanted to take, because he didn't really want Luke to learn that throwing tantrums got him what he wanted. Nonetheless, if Luke was going to be stubborn and hold out . . .

"Listen, Luke," Guy said, speaking as patiently as he could. "You have to eat the spaghetti, okay? Because if you don't eat the spaghetti, then you'll never grow up to be big and strong. You want to be big and strong, don't you?" Luke looked at Guy out of the corners of his eyes.

"Worms."

Guy sighed, and ran a hand over his short blond spikes. "Okay," he said. "Okay. We can do this the hard way, then." Picking up the fork again, Guy began to wave it closer to Luke's mouth. "Come on, Luke," he coaxed. "Open wide . . ."

"No!" Luke swung his arm toward the fork, the back of his hand catching it. Red sauce splattered toward Guy's face, but a larger amount was smeared on the back of Luke's hand, causing him to gape at it in horror. "Blood!" he cried. "Worm blood got on me! Hot worm blood's on me!"

A few of the maids poked their heads into the dining room upon hearing Luke crying about blood, but Guy merely grinned sheepishly, waving his free hand at them. "It's okay," he told them. "There's no actual blood. He's just-" Guy's words were cut off abruptly by a fistful of spaghetti, which found its way into his hair and splattered onto the side of his face. The maids began to giggle along with Luke, who Guy turned to see was grinning devilishly from his chair.

"There," he said smugly. "You have worms."

The maids graciously left the room, still giggling, as Guy pulled the noodles from his hair and swiped his arm across his face. "They're not worms," he repeated. "They're noodles. See?" Though he knew his action could get him in trouble, and though he knew it was immature, Guy pressed the noodle-covered fork against Luke's cheek, causing Luke to shriek and squirm away.

"Ugh! Stop it, Guy! Stop touching me with worms!"

"Noodles, Luke, noodles!" Guy pulled the fork away, but the second he did Luke jumped forward, swiping another fistful of noodles off the plate and throwing them at Guy. Since his eyes were already on Luke, Guy was able to dodge, and the sauce-covered noodles ended up splattered on the wall behind him. "Doing that really isn't going to make your father or mother very happy, you know."

"The worms are yours," Luke said stubbornly. "So you clean them."

"They're not worms, they're not mine, and I'm not cleaning those until you eat these." Guy wagged the fork at Luke, who glared petulantly at it. "One bite, Luke. Just one bite, and then you can see that they're not worms."

Luke continued to glare at the proffered fork for a few seconds, contemplating, before he finally opened his mouth. Grinning, Guy put the fork in Luke's mouth, withdrawing it to see that it was thankfully relieved of noodles. Luke chewed slowly, and finally swallowed, still glaring sulkily at Guy.

"See?" Guy said, setting the fork back on Luke's plate. "They're just noodles and sauce. Eat up." Turning, Guy started to walk back around to the other side of the table, but froze when something lukewarm and mushy found itself smashed to his head. The second Guy's back was turned, Luke had stood up on his chair and picked up his plate of spaghetti, doing his best to flatten the noodles over the back of Guy's head.

"Ha!" Luke said triumphantly. "Keep your worms, Guy. Keep your worms."