Title: Barking To Disaster (PBFF) 7/7
Author: Glue Project
Rating: PG-13?
Pairings: SetoJou
Spoilers: Slight mention of Pegasus' island. Slight.
Disclaimer: Nothing mine. Not even the bunny.
Summery: See TEXT BUNNY #22
This is the final chapter, and twice as long as the others to boot. And to all those wondering about the water thing, I was just following the bunny. I've never watched Inuyasha.
Chapter Six
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Seto felt his shoulders droop. "Damn it." He sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose.
Mokuba looked about as sad as his older brother.
Katsuya was swimming in the over-full bathtub, looking about as dejected as one could get. He was, once again, in dog form.
Seto sighed again. "Jou, you'd better get out of there."
He slowly clambered out of the tub, golden fur shining.
Seto and Mokuba dried him off carefully with towels, not saying anything. He was then dressed up in a sweatshirt, since there was not a hairdryer in the entirety of the mansion.
Seto then slipped a green nylon dog collar around Katsuya's neck, with the explanation that he didn't want the other sent to the pound and euthanized.
Mokuba then departed, most likely to take care of the bunny that had decided to make a presence.
The poor, once-again dog just trudged out to his bed and cuddled with the pillows, to fall asleep in misery.
Seto sat in the bathroom for a little bit, looking at the tub in suspicion. He quietly dipped his hand into the water and then withdrew it rapidly.
The water was still hot.
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Dinner was a somber affair. Seto had forced Katsuya to sit in a seat at the table, and then put a plate of roast beef before him.
Mokuba got sadder, if possible, at seeing that. 'Last time Niisama cooked that, we'd just gotten back from Pegasus' island...'
They ate silently and afterwards, Seto excused himself from the table.
Being only six in the evening now, Mokuba cleaned up the dishes before asking if the other wanted to watch a movie.
Katsuya just padded his way back to his room, tail dragging on the ground.
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Seto was in his room, sitting at the white table that his black laptop sat on. His long fingers flew over the keyboard as he searched for his answer.
"Hmm...Kaiba-san...ATTACK!! ROUND HOUSE KICK!!...er...nope, never mind." That was the home computer. With another false lead, evidently.
"Have to figure how to un-integrate that fighting game from your system..."
"ATTACK!! ICE MAGIC!!"
Mokuba, when he was little, had accidentally put one of his PS games into the upgrader for the home computer, the one that ran throughout the entirety of the house. It really hadn't been that bad at first. In fact, this was the first major occurrence of its 'game dialogue'.
"I SHALL ATTACK YOU BACK! FIRE DEATH!!" That was another one of the computer voices. Seto thought that he had counted three.
"ICE POWER!"
"FIRE DOG!"
"ICE HUMAN!"
...
Silence.
"Are you trying to tell me something?"
There was a purring sound from the computer.
Silence. Then...
"ATTACK!"
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Seto looked at his watch as he padded silently down the hall. It was a few minutes past midnight.
Hopefully the golden puppy would be awake by now. He'd been asleep for most of the day, not that Seto blamed him.
He knocked on the door. "Jou?"
There was a whimper and a flopping sound.
"You awake?" Silence. "I think I have a lead."
Katsuya rushed over to him.
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Seto was lounging on the couch, waiting to find out if the lead was a good one.
He had told the other to try taking a cold shower instead of a hot one.
Simple problem, simple logic. Right?
However, since it was going on one in the morning, his eyelids had taken a liking to be heavy. There was also the idle thought, that his idea hadn't worked, floating around his brain.
Just as he was about to fall asleep, he heard an odd sound. One that was suspiciously akin to bare feet on marble. Running.
He opened his eyes right before he was tackle-glomped (when rather hyper, Mokuba called it a tahglomple.) by a very hyper, very happy...rather unclothed blond.
Or did a towel swung around the waist and a collar snug around the neck count as clothing?
Seto was wrenched to his feet by the shorter boy, who then proceeded to squeeze the breath out of his chest.
"Happy to be human?" Seto wheezed.
The blond relinquished his deathgrip on the other and nodded violently. His hair was matted to his head. Then he paused and a curious expression flittered onto his face. That was replaced by a blush a moment later.
You see, in all that hugging, Katsuya's towel had loosened from its knot at his side. It would have slipped down if it wasn't for Seto's hands holding the loosened knot...
Katsuya blinked, and then his mouth flopped open and shut worthlessly.
Seto smirked. "Can you take the edges of your own towel now?" He watched amused as Katsuya scrambled to do so. "Now lets find something to dress you in."
He grinned as they walked to his room. He was no longer sleepy. This was going to be too much fun to fall asleep during.
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Seto grinned as they sat on the couch. It was three in the morning, and both could tell that it would take awhile to fall asleep.
Katsuya's hyper mood was rubbing off on the normally impassive CEO. Either that, or the oxygen he was deprived while Katsuya glomped the other was reverting his nature back to those of his own age.
Whatever it was, it was a nice change of pace.
Seto was surprised that they hadn't woken Mokuba up yet.
Katsuya was wearing red button-up shirt and a pair of simple black pants, held up with a belt.
Seto, in his giddy state, thought it was vaguely amusing how disheveled and carefree Katsuya could make his most professional clothes look. Well, the way his hair currently stuck up all over the place added to that effect as well.
Katsuya decided to fly sideways and glomped Seto again. Grinning from ear to ear, he pinned the brunets arms down to the sides of his chest.
Caring nothing for balance, Seto flopped back, suddenly rather tired. He yawned.
Katsuya soon followed. He quirked a lazy smile at the brunet, still in glomping mode. "'D'analine only lasts for so long..." he murmured.
Seto nodded, eyes falling faster than the blond's.
As he drifted off to dream land, he was aware of a warm something pressing against his lips.
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Mokuba blinked once he entered the living room. He then rubbed his eyes, decided it was real, then ran to get his Polaroid camera.
Seeing his brother and their human guest cuddling on the couch wasn't something that he was likely to see again, right?
...Wait...human?
Looking through the viewfinder, Mokuba could clearly see that Katsuya was indeed human. And smiling at that.
Katsuya's head was resting on the CEO's shoulder and his hands had moved up to keep the other shoulder company.
Seto, on the other hand, had his head tipped back and the muted sounds of--gasp!--snoring! came from his slightly parted lips. That, and his left hand had come up to rest on the others waist. A slight, contented smile had chased away the perpetual frown and smirk from his face.
Quite a change. Quite a change indeed.
Sure that he had captured more than one good picture for the use of blackmail-matchmaker later, Mokuba ran and hid the pictures in the drawer of his desk. He then checked his socks for tread-less-ness and grinned.
He ran all the way from his room, through the marble or wooden-floored hallways, right into the living room. He then used all that build-up speed to crash right into Seto and Katsuya.
Both boys jumped at the black-haired kuriboh-clone's attack.
It took Katsuya the work of a minute to figure out that, yes, he hadn't dreamed up last night (this morning, actually), and that yes, he was now human again.
Neither Mokuba nor Seto had a chance.
The blond puppy glomped them both viciously in glee.
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Katsuya, Seto found out, was a good persuader, almost as good as Mokuba. With their joint power, they could rule the world...
Having found himself on the receiving end of two of the powerful patented puppy-eyes look, Seto was forced to take Mokuba and Katsuya to all the arcades in Domino until they found the mu--no...the puppy's friends.
Having also found himself on the end of another such look had him carrying his brother all throughout Domino, the blond in the lead.
Seto snickered at a thought. 'Puppy plus collar and lead equals happy puppy.' But where to find a lead?
After the commotion-glomping this morning, and before the synchronized looks, Katsuya had calmed down enough to get it understood his aversion to his...fathers name. Both Mokuba and he had accepted it without question, blocking out memories...
Seto just decided to stick with 'Pup' and the like, since that was easier to remember. The other didn't seem to hold any complaints against it.
Mokuba frowned at first, until he released that it was a step up from 'mutt'. Sort of like a promise that Seto wasn't going to forget that he had gotten the blond cursed.
Why? For not believing in curses.
Seto was glad that he had found out that his employees were actually capable of handling most of the low-priority things he usually did. It was different, not working as much, but these past three weeks had been...odd in themselves. Mokuba had been rather smug today he had noticed though.
Katsuya suddenly took off, and Seto had to run to keep up, keenly aware of the heavy weight of his brother on his back. He leaned forward a bit to get a better sense of balance. In doing so however, prohibited him from seeing the red-shirted back until his nose was firmly pressed into the crimson silk.
In a dizzying cycle, Seto relieazed belatedly that he had longer legs and could run faster because of it. However, he could smell strawberries, so he was content to just...stay..there...until the flashing lights and haze of pain went away...
Suffice to say, he wasn't too happy at being picked up by two people and carried into a game shop that he couldn't even see. All he was currently aware of was the swirls of colors that assaulted him, and the noises that ricocheted off the insides of his skull.
"That was quite some tumble, ne, Yuugi?"
"Um hm. And they didn't even get scratched up!"
Seto heard a groan beside him, the source of the strawberries. "Feel like hell though. You try taking a noise-dive on concrete."
There was a whisper across Seto's mind, but he discarded it.
"I agree Yami...that is odd. Good, but odd."
His vision had cleared, but everything was still too bright. Mokuba sat on a high stool, a deck of cards in his hands, seemingly unaffected. Honda was leaning against the wall, and Yuugi against the counter.
He shook his head, and it cleared further.
What a way to start off a somewhat friendly visit.
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Seto was surprised to find his shields down. He actually hadn't relieazed it until his brother had mentioned it on the way home, and by then it was too late to resurrect the steel-faced CEO façade. He didn't even try. With a sigh he realized that he'd been without it for about two weeks anyway.
The blond was still acting hyper as ever, the metal jingling of his collar and tag punctuating this.
Funny. After having him calling the blond a mutt all the time, he didn't even put up a fuss about the collar. Maybe because the rules had changed, and that this was a precaution...
Rules had changed? Pfft. Right.
But his thoughts lingered on the one last thing he remember, if it was that, before he fell asleep this morning.
He was suddenly jolted from his thoughts by the blond, who Seto was considering calling him the Glomping King.
Seto arched an eyebrow at the blond whose arms were, once again, around his chest.
They were back home now, sitting at the table, waiting for the pizza to arrive. Seto had a cupful of hot, steaming coffee in his hand.
A second later, he didn't and Katsuya's hair was matted down with the brown liquid.
He sputtered, letting go of the teenage CEO.
Seto just smirked.
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The remaining two weeks of vacation were spent like that. Katsuya glomping the two brothers awake, then dragging Mokuba (and Seto if he could) to the game shop, with only minor protests from the latter.
In those two weeks, they were able to find out that while water could change Katsuya's form from human to dog, and visa versa, other liquids could not. Example: coffee.
still, it became common practice for the CEO to take a thermos full of cold water and a thermal bag of cold water balloons to Kaiba Corp. should something come up.
The subject of Katsuya's father was never brought to light, nor the subject of every leaving the mansion.
The two brothers were in silent agreement.
Katsuya was welcome in their home.
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Katsuya sat on a bed, computer humming as it logged into his instant messaging program. The computer beeped 'Wingardium Leviosa!' to alert him that Yuugi was logged in.
Seto had thought the reference to the professor fitting.
He grinned a moment later as an image of Yuugi appeared on the monitor, taking up most of the screen.
Yuugi laughed once both of the computers had synchronized. "Have a little trouble with water again, ne?"
Katsuya quirked his eyebrows together and drew his hand through his hair. It snagged on a pair of angular golden ears. He gave an easy laugh. "I was cooking ramen noodles and the water caught me." He grinned. "Sorta forgot about it, ya know? It's easy enough to stay human-ish."
The rest of their conversation focused on school, which was going to start up in a few days. They glossed over the subject of all that had happened during the rather eventful break and the report that was due on the first day of school.
However, Yuugi had to leave when it became apparent that Yami had gotten his star-shaped hair stuck while putting on one of their shirts.
Yuugi left with a passing remark that equaled Yami looking like Honda.
There was an indignant squeak before the line between the two computers was severed.
Katsuya chuckled as he turned off the computer and sat back on the bed. He gave a squeak when the bed shifted and a pair of hands caught him around the waist. He then relaxed, relieazed that it was stupid to think it was anyone other than the person whose room he was currently in.
"Have a good talk, Pup?"
Katsuya gave an ecstatic nod, golden ears bobbing.
Seto chuckled. "I think it's the golden retriever in you that makes you so hyperactive."
Katsuya laid his ears back before giving in with a smile. "Hmm. Mayhaps."
Seto stood up from the bed, hand snared through Katsuya's. The puppy blinked at him in surprise.
"We have to go to the school to have your address changed."
Katsuya paused to take in the meaning of those words. Then he jumped up and glomped the taller boy.
Katsuya was home.
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Ner. Lame ending. I still like it though.
--Glue Project