Disclaimer: I own nothing involved in this story unless I invented it myself. This is written for fun, not for profit. All forms of feedback eagerly accepted. Concrit is loved the most, but everything is welcome.
Fandom: Yu-Gi-Oh GX
Title: All His Own
Characters: Shou & Ryou
Word Count: 930||Status: One-shot
Genre: Family, Humor||Rated: G
Challenge: Written for the One Sibling Boot Camp, prompt #44, entertain; Written for the Diversity Writing Challenge, section B, #74, write a family scene; Written for the Valentine's to White Day Advent, day 26, write about characters in their childhood days.
Summary: Watch his brother for a few minutes, they said. When said brother is four years old, a few minutes can become a nightmare. And set the stage for the future.
"Watch your brother for me."
With that, the two Marufuji siblings were left in the living room. This wasn't such a foolish thing; the kitchen was right next to it, and if anything truly bad happened, their mother or father would be there in a matter of heartbeats.
But so far as Ryou felt about the matter, his parents could've been on the moon. The six year old stared at his brother, trying to figure out what to do. Taking care of someone, even his brother, wasn't in his personal playbook of how to spend a warm, sunny summer's afternoon.
Shou paid no attention to him at the moment, finding far more interest in toddling around and seeing what he could get himself into. Ryou wondered if he'd been like that two years earlier. Or at least he did when he wasn't wondering if there was anything around that Shou might break.
He didn't have to worry. Marufuji Airi and Hotaka had made certain that anything even remotely breakable had been put either out of Shou's reach or in a room he couldn't get to. That didn't stop Ryou from watching worriedly. As much as he found Shou annoying - a trait shared by many older brothers throughout the world and from the dawn of time - he didn't want anything bad to happen to him.
He just didn't know what to do. He spent his own time usually reading, if there weren't any interesting duels to watch. Ever since he'd first heard of dueling, he'd wanted nothing more to do with his life than to be a duelist. He even had a deck now.
Without thinking much of it, Ryou pulled his deck out and stared it. It wasn't much of a deck; his parents had bought him a dozen or so booster packs and he'd picked out the monsters that he liked the best from them all. He hadn't even had a real duel yet. He'd heard that a kid down the street dueled. He'd already made plans to find this 'Tenjoin Fubuki' as soon as he could.
But right now, he had a little brother to deal with, who was staring at some of the furnishings as if plotting to either climb on top of them or pull them over or perhaps both.
Not bothering to put his deck away, Ryou hurried over there, grabbing one of Shou's plush cars, and waved it at the little boy. "Hey! Look!"
Shou had just begun to put out one hand onto the tall bookcase he'd spent long minutes staring at when Ryou offered the plush. He blinked at it, large gray eyes going wide as he began to smile. Ryou smiled back; he'd successfully distracted Shou!
Until Shou reached out and grabbed hold of the deck in Ryou's other hand, pulling it away.
For a moment, Ryou had no idea of what to do or so. The idea that someone might take his deck, and that someone might be his younger brother, had never once crossed his mind.
Shou turned the deck over, staring at it for a few seconds, before he giggled in a way that might have sent chills down the spine of a lesser person. Without a bit of hesitation, he started to toss the cards everywhere, giggling the whole time.
"Stop that!" Ryou tried to grab for the cards, only for Shou to back off and start running as fast as his short legs would allow, still laughing, still throwing the cards around. "Shou! Stop that!"
Shou paid no attention whatsoever, but scurried and giggled and threw, right up until his legs tangled up in the rug and he pitched forward, scattering the last few cards as he did. He sat where he was for a few moments, blinking, while Ryou stared at him, baffled on what to do.
He took a couple of steps forward, and something about that seemed to tell Shou that it was time to express his displeasure at having fallen. He screwed up his face, tilted his head back, and howled at the top of his lungs.
"Mama!" Shou's cry bounced around the apartment until Marufuji Airi stepped in there, took one look at what was going on, and hurried right over to her younger son.
"There, there," she murmured, taking him into her arms. "You're all right. See? Not even a scratch."
Assured by a quick warm glance that his mother wasn't going to blame him for Shou having fallen, Ryou started to pick up his cards, checking each one to reassure himself that they weren't harmed. Every duelist he'd seen on television made a point of saying how much they treasured their cards and how to take good care of them, and Ryou wasn't going to do any differently.
"Mom," he started to say as he looked over. He lost the thread of his thoughts a moment later when he saw his brother had two of his cards in hand now, giggling once more, even as their mom held him.
Shou bounced the two cards toward one another, eyes now bright with joy again, a stream of babble coming from his lips about what the cards were doing, who they were doing it with, and why they were doing it at all. Their mother listened to all of it, nodding in agreement, and Ryou decided then and there that if his parents wouldn't do it, he would save up his allowance and get Shou his own deck.
Let him play with those cards and not with Ryou's.
The End