Disclaimer: I do not own the characters, plot, and themes of YGO or the book Memoirs of A Geisha. Cue sad face...
I do, however, own this work of fanfiction, its predecessor About That Obey Business, and its quasi-successor Sentimental Notes.
Dedicated to fandom friends, mutual fangirling, and affectionate self-satire
"And now that we're together, Tea, I promise we'll stay that way."
Yugi, after the Crump Duel, Season 3
Mr. Gardner always liked Yugi Motou.
Sure, the boy wore more hair gel than a touring rock band, but, hey, what the boy lacked in fashion sense he more than made up for in heart. As a traditional man, Mr. G much preferred a son-in-law with heart than one with fashion sense.
Well...almost.
Heart meant a lot, Mr. G reflected as he watered what was left of the withered bonsai in the living room. Verdant leaves perked up, then dropped sadly like Mr. G's mood when he contemplated the future. He swiftly amended his earlier assessment. Sure, heart was great, but then again, he would like grandchildren to spoil with chocolate and roller coaster rides, too, preferably before he went the way of the aforementioned bonsai. Achieving said goal necessitated addressing the potentially negative side effects of wearing tight leather pants with his son-in-law to be immediately. What else would Mrs. Gardner (his brilliant and obviously better half) do with all of the duel monsters plushies she's been hoarding ever since she met Yugi, anyway? It wasn't like they could fit more stuffed Kuribohs and Celtic Guardians in the guest bedroom without smushing all of the Blue Eyes White Dragons, not that Yugi would have minded after Text Gate 2015...
Mr. G frowned as he recalled The Incident in painstaking detail. Managing his expectations slightly, he made a mental note not to inquire about grandchildren just yet. Currently, it was still just one Motou and one Gardner, but since Text Gate started yesterday when Yugi sent a text message asking for permission to propose, that census was about to change.
Well, at least everyone hoped so.
L-O-L, Mr. G typed ecstatically in response to Yugi's page long inquiry (complete with graphics and flow charts and an emoticon Kuriboh clutching a bouquet of roses!), accidentally deleting the message twice before finally getting the stupid send button to work. That shorthand meant Lots-Of-Love, according to Kaiba, who seemed uncharacteristically happy while introducing Mr. G to the newest text lingo over spaghetti. It had been Mrs. G's idea to invite "that sweet angel" Mokuba and his reluctant brother to dinner. The surly look on Seto's face faded after he droned an incredibly boring lecture on normative shorthand communicational paradigms, replaced by an expression Mr. G didn't quite recognize. He had been meaning to ask Mokuba, but the boy buried what he could of that hair behind the breadsticks in...what retrospectively must have been sheer embarrassment as soon as Seto opened his mouth.
In any case, Mr. G had just finished congratulating Kaiba on growing out of teenage dramatics when the phone rang with a hyperventilating Yugi on the other end, time difference be damned.
Following a tense but illuminating exchange, Mr. G proceeded to banish the sniggering CEO and his idiotic technology from his pastel colored living room with a less than playful games of catch. The KC brand cellphone missed Kaiba's mullet by a hair; both of Tea's old pointe shoes did not. Ha! Mr. G mentally high fived himself.
Mrs. G then made full use of Mokuba's video recording lessons by capturing and sharing the exchange on her new blog. The post garnered several hundred thousand followers and likes (up from a measly two just an hour ago- Tea and a very amused Mokuba Kaiba, since Mr. G abandoned his cell phone in the previously mentioned game of catch) when IndustrialIllusionsFangurlzUnofficial381xLovesPancakesandChiffon, whoever that was, reblogged it to their Hottie McDuelHottie page.
According to Mokuba, searches for Seto plus running plus funny crashed the Internet for twenty whole minutes before Research and Development managed to capture and redirect all links to the Kaiba Corp homepage, which featured a distinctly stationary and very unamused Seto delivering yet another lecture on the lexical ambiguities of McDuelHottie-ism as a postmodern social construct. When the Internet crashed yet again, Mokuba asked R and D sotto voce if they could capture and redirect Seto, too, preferably to the farthest, wifi-less boulder they could find.
Shaking his head ruefully, Mr. G proceeded to congratulate himself on successfully educating the Motou boy about the basic tenets of feminism via telephone. Feminism A dash K dash A (which, according to Mokuba, meant Also-Known-As) meant Yugi should really be asking Tea herself for permission, not her parents. Clearly Mrs. G was the smart one of the family, but Mr. G wasn't too bad, if he did say so himself, after throughly brainwashing, err...convincing, his future son-in-law of the merits of fly fishing and SWEATPANTS in the same conversation.
Here, Mr. G paused to beam at the life-sized Swan Lake poster behind the couch. Tea was already talented performer, a wonderful friend, and an all around great catch, not that Yugi noticed for oh, the last twenty-two years.
At that, Mr. G muffled a snort. Took the boy long enough to finally "get with the program" or whatever the kids were calling it nowadays. Better late than never, he sniffed.
Now, Mrs. G liked to announce to anything with ears (and everything without) that she always knew about Yugi's crush on Tea, even before Yugi knew. It was a parent thing. Whatever that meant, Mr. G didn't blame the boy one bit for seeing stars every time Tea smiled. That was a parent thing, too, according to Mrs. G, who was curiously silent about said parent thing when Tea called last winter about the mysterious package of matching Dark Magician Girl and Dark Magician bathrobes that arrived in a battered Air Japan crate...complete with a bonsai cutting that survived its journey to New York City with .07365 percent of its spirit intact.
Ms. G merely smiled when Tea and Mr. G raised identically quizzical eyebrows. "You'll see," she murmured mysteriously while patting the balding bonsai.
The return Air Express package to Domino contained a collage of photographs. The first featured Yugi, fast asleep on the dining room table, a fuzzy purple hat emblazoned across his torso, "balancing" the plant on his pointy bangs while Joey and Tristan paraded an "It was her idea!" banner the background. The next picture was one of Tea running towards the camera, face split into a wide grin while Yugi- sans green hairpiece- followed with a can of whipped cream aimed manically at her tresses. The last one was Joey and Tristan backing slowly away from the prank war carnage, shoulders blurred with mirth as streams of whipped cream splattered the lens.
Mr. G framed the newest collage to the left of Swan Lake.
Mrs. G recovered enough of her voice to cough it's a parent thing to the bonsai, who nodded in silent, herbaceous agreement.
Yugi Motou always liked Tea Gardner.
Sure, she owned enough pairs of pointe shoes to make professional costumers faint, but, hey, what she lacked in closet space she more than made up for in heart. He much preferred heart to closet, especially when she laughed the way she was now, with the corners of her eyes crinkling and wisps of hair framing her smile, just the way her laugh echoed across his memories. There it was, when she whacked Joey over the head for stealing his lunch money. There it was again, when she kicked Tristan for stealing his lunch. And most of all, there it was when she patiently endured his encyclopedic instructions about the magical powers of Kuriboh, even when Mr. and Mrs. Gardner plus the original bonsai wilted from boredom.
It was a friend thing, he thought at first.
Except...Little Tea didn't really care about the particulars of combining trap and magic cards and the rest. She liked it all well enough, but she cared more about Little Yugi, the person playing the game.
It was a love thing, Big Yugi realized a little while later.
Though, come to think of it, feigning clueless-ness about certain matters ran in the Gardner and soon to be Motou family. Just as Tea figured it wouldn't hurt Yugi to feel like he was needed every once in a while, Yugi, for his part, pretended not to know she purposefully forgot that Multiply created a wall of Kuribohs no less than fifteen times. Yugi preferred to let his brilliant and better half (as well as Mr. and Mrs G) think he was lovably clueless as opposed to clueless about love. After all, it's a husband thing, right?
With that in mind, Yugi traipsed into the living room, where an unsuspecting Tea was lounging with a mug of coffee and a book. The baby bonsai cutting in his hand twinkled happily, a small diamond ring on one lopsided branch while Joey and Tristan twinkled, too, as they mugged for the camera from behind the couch.
Mr. G's newest photo collage featured an estatic Tea, a slightly weepy Yugi, and a most definitely stoic pair of best friends holding a banner that read "Love from the Motous, NYC 2015."
Mrs. G proceeded to make twenty-two bonsai cuttings- one to go with each year's worth of duel monsters in the spare bedroom- for her next mailing.
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