Breakfast - Tealy and the Crew

DumbDird was already in the kitchen when Tealy came downstairs.

This was not surprising. DumbDird had a key, or more accurately DumbDird did not need a key because the door was unlocked, and DumbDird's relationship with the concept of a home he wasn't supposed to be in had always been flexible. He was standing at the counter with the posture of someone who had been there for a while and had been productive in that time, which with DumbDird meant something had either been fixed or broken or both.

"DURR, TALLY," he said, turning around with an expression of enormous pride. "DURR, I MADE BREAKFAST."

Tealy looked at the counter.

There was a bowl.

In the bowl was cereal.

It was not good cereal. It was not the cereal of someone who had gone through a pantry and selected the best available option. It was the cereal that lived at the back of the shelf behind everything else, the cereal that was purchased occasionally by people who had read something about fiber and then immediately regretted the purchase, the cereal that sat in its box for months collecting the ambient sadness of a food product that knew it was not anyone's first choice.

Raisin bran.

Not even the name brand. The store brand. The box was slightly dented.

Tealy looked at the bowl.

Looked at DumbDird.

Looked at the bowl again.

"You made cereal," he said.

"DURR, YEAH, TALLY—"

"You poured cereal into a bowl."

"DURR, BREAKFAST, TALLY—"

"DumbDird that's raisin bran."

"DURR, YEAH—"

"Where did you even find that."

"DURR, IT WAS IN THE BACK OF YOUR PANTRY, TALLY—"

"It was in the back of my pantry for a reason—"

"DURR, IT WAS RIGHT THERE TALLY—"

"It's been there since I moved in—"

"DURR, TALLY—" DumbDird gestured at the bowl with both hands, the gesture of a man presenting something he was proud of— "DURR, I MADE YOU BREAKFAST."

Tealy looked at the raisin bran.

The raisin bran looked back.

It had the specific appearance of a cereal that had made peace with being nobody's favorite. The raisins sat in the bran flakes with the resigned energy of people waiting for a bus that was never coming.

"Thank you," Tealy said, because DumbDird had gotten a pipe to the head last night and had made him breakfast and the breakfast was raisin bran but the intention was real.

He sat down.

DumbDird went to the fridge for the milk.

---

The milk situation revealed itself in stages.

Stage one was DumbDird opening the fridge and finding the milk, which was normal.

Stage two was DumbDird picking up the milk, which was normal.

Stage three was DumbDird looking at the date on the milk, which was when the normal portion of the sequence ended.

He looked at it for a moment.

"Durr," he said.

"What," said Tealy.

"Durr, Tally."

"DumbDird."

"Durr." He turned the carton around so the date was visible from across the kitchen.

Tealy looked at the date.

The milk had expired.

Not recently. Not by a narrow margin that could be argued about. By a margin that suggested it had expired while Tealy was still having his first towel incident, which meant it had been sitting in the fridge for the entire duration of the week's events, which meant the milk had expired before DumbDird had hit himself with his own pipe, before the sugar pills, before 9902, before the clothes hangers.

"Oh," said Tealy.

They looked at each other.

They looked at the milk.

They looked at the bowl of raisin bran, which was sitting on the table waiting for milk that had, as it turned out, moved on.

---

The pouring out of the milk was an event.

Not because it was difficult. You opened the carton, you went to the sink, you poured it out. The physical process was simple. What made it an event was the specific energy with which it had to be done, which was the energy of two people standing at a sink in the early morning disposing of expired milk while a bowl of raisin bran waited on the table behind them, neither of them fully wanting to be the person holding the carton but both of them aware it had to be done.

DumbDird did it, because he was the one holding it, and he poured it with the slow, ceremonial awkwardness of someone attending a very small and very specific funeral.

The milk went down the drain.

They watched it go.

"Durr," said DumbDird quietly.

"Yeah," said Tealy.

The last of it disappeared.

DumbDird set the carton down.

They stood at the sink for a moment in the silence that follows the disposal of expired dairy products, which was a particular kind of silence.

"Durr, Tally," said DumbDird.

"Yeah."

"Durr, your cereal has no milk now."

Tealy looked at the raisin bran on the table.

Dry raisin bran.

The raisins had been waiting for a bus that had not come and had now been informed there was no bus.

"Yeah," said Tealy.

---

He opened the pantry.

Found the Fruity Pebbles on the second shelf, exactly where they lived, bright and present and reliable, which was everything the raisin bran was not. He got a bowl. He found the other milk, the one he'd bought two days ago and which was not expired because it was two days old, which was how milk was supposed to work.

He made himself cereal.

Sat down across from the bowl of dry raisin bran, which DumbDird had made with love and expired milk and genuine pride, and ate his Fruity Pebbles.

DumbDird sat down too.

He looked at his raisin bran.

Looked at Tealy's Fruity Pebbles.

Looked at his raisin bran.

"Durr," he said.

"You can have some," Tealy said.

"DURR, REALLY TALLY—"

"You can have some of mine, not all of it."

"DURR, OKAY—"

DumbDird pushed the raisin bran to the side with the specific lack of ceremony of someone discontinuing a project, pulled Tealy's bowl slightly toward the center of the table, and ate Fruity Pebbles from Tealy's bowl while Tealy ate Fruity Pebbles from the same bowl, which was either companionable or unhygienic depending on your perspective and was probably both.

The raisin bran sat to the side.

Dry.

Alone.

Waiting.

"DumbDird," Tealy said.

"Durr, yeah Tally?"

"Thanks for making breakfast."

DumbDird looked up.

"DURR, TALLY, IT WASN'T VERY GOOD—"

"It was raisin bran with expired milk."

"DURR, YEAH—"

"It was the worst possible breakfast."

"DURR, YEAH, TALLY, I'M SORRY—"

"Thank you," Tealy said again.

DumbDird did the thing his face did.

Tealy pointed at him immediately.

"Don't."

"DURR—"

"I mean it—"

"DURRR—"

"I will take back the Fruity Pebbles—"

"DURR, TALLY—"

"DumbDird—"

"DURR, OKAY, OKAY." DumbDird pressed both hands flat on the table and visibly contained himself, which took effort that was apparent in his entire body. "Durr. Okay."

They ate Fruity Pebbles in the morning light.

The raisin bran sat in its bowl and was not eaten by anyone.

It would remain on the counter for three days because neither of them threw it away, for reasons that were not discussed and did not need to be.

---

"DumbDird made me breakfast," Tealy posted in the group chat. "It was raisin bran. The milk was expired. We had to pour it out. I made myself Fruity Pebbles."

Dird reacted with 👍

Beric replied: "Check your milk dates more regularly."

Greeny replied: "The raisin bran has been in your pantry since you moved in. I've seen it."

"I know."

"Why did you keep it."

"I don't know, Greeny."

"It was never going to get eaten."

"I know."

"And yet."

"Greeny."

"Yes."

"Stop."

Blara sent a photo of raisin bran.

She had it ready.

Obviously she had it ready.

Dird reacted with 👍

DumbDird sent: "DURR NEXT TIME I'LL MAKE REAL BREAKFAST TALLY"

"You poured cereal in a bowl."

"DURR NEXT TIME I'LL COOK SOMETHING TALLY"

Tealy looked at this message for a long moment.

"Please don't," he typed.

"DURR, DUH, TALLY. I'M GOING TO."

The Duh.

The confident, wrong Duh.

Tealy put his phone face down on the table and ate the last of his Fruity Pebbles.

Somewhere in the pantry, the raisin bran box still had some left in it.

Nobody was going to eat it.

It was going to live there forever.

That was fine.

Some things just lived in the pantry.