Title: A Glass of Chianti
Fandom: Yu-Gi-Oh!
Summary: Seto encounters... Cynthia.
Rating: PG-13
Notes: Again, not entirely my fault- er, idea. Jun is the co-creator of the children. We both co-own the kiddies, Casey-Ra, Hal, and Cynthia. In fact, she helped out with most of this chapter. Indirectly. Birthday gift for Jun. Happy Birthday!
Warnings that didn't fit in the summary:
(big inside joke) (supposed mpreg) (setomalik setootogi noncon!pegasusseto) (scary offspring). Oh dear.
The doorbell rang.
Malik sipped his coffee, eyes flicking over the newspaper.
It rang again.
Malik glanced down the hallway that led from the living room to the foyer. Some servant should have opened it by now.
Again, the doorbell again. Malik set his paper and his coffee down, and set off for the front door, rearranging his earrings as he did so.
The doorbell rang for the fourth time before Malik wrenched the front door open.
There, at the door, was a manservant.
"What do you want?" Malik asked, yawning. The manservant was shaking slightly- Malik couldn't see why.
"This... is to be given to Mr. Kaiba." The manservant handed Malik an envelope. He took it, looking over it, and when he looked up, the manservant was gone. Malik shrugged, and retreated back into the house. He sniffed it experimentally, and snorted. Ugh. It reeked of wine.
He made his way upstairs and into Seto's study. "Seto..." Malik waved the envelope slightly, as if to get the scent of wine off.
Seto looked up from his work. He had long since stopped trying to keep family members out of his study- they came in anyways, and if they were forbidden, they just took things. "Yes?"
"This just came for you." Malik set the envelope down on the desk, on top of Seto's paperwork.
"We have people we pay to get the mail."
"A little man in a uniform gave it to me. Now open it, I want to see who it's from!" Malik crossed to Seto's office chair and settled himself on the armrest, draping an arm over Seto to stay upright.
Seto pulled the last letter opener off his desk (the previous letter openers had been stolen until he bought a letter opener so ugly no one would touch it save himself) and cut the envelope neatly open. The paper inside was much more saturated with the wine smell.
Seto skimmed over it in a very businesslike manner, eyes flicking up and down the paper. Malik, however, stopped at the sender.
"Pegasus Crawford?" He asked.
"Yes. He'll be coming this afternoon on some casual business." Seto folded it up and put it gently in a drawer. The wine smell did not go away.
"I've always wanted to meet him."
"Really?"
"Well, you and Otogi work with him, and he's the only man I know who scares you."
"I am not scared of Pegasus. He's just a freak." Seto paused. "More than any of you."
"Oh, that's so funny." Malik tugged on Seto's ear in a very painful manner.
As it turned out, Casey-Ra and Hal were also curious about Pegasus, and thus, the whole family was in the foyer, awaiting Pegasus' arrival.
"Is Pegasus the guy you told me about?" Hal asked Otogi.
"Yes."
"The one that if you hadn't had me with Daddy you would have-"
"Hal, be quiet."
Suddenly, the door swung open, and all smell was lost under layers and layers of wine. A chill shot down Seto's spine. There was a Disturbance in The Force.
Included in this display was smoke, which was as fancy as smoke could get. Seto broke into a fit of coughs. When it at last began to clear, he could make out the shapes of two figures-one large, one small.
As the smoke cleared further, the figures were visible. The larger was Pegasus, whose hands rested on the shoulders of the smaller figure. The smaller figure was a teenage child, a pretty one at that, though very feminine. They only assumed it was male because it didn't seem to have a very prominent chest. It possessed absolute masses of pale brown curls, and was engaging the floor in a staring contest.
"...The child smells of WINE!" cried Malik.
"Its hair is unnaturally curled!" exclaimed Otogi.
"Hello, Kaiba-boy," greeted Pegasus, smiling that all too familiar smile. "We had a child together- Well then, I'm off to Italy. Be good, Cynthia!"
Pegasus then retreated up the walkway with inhuman speed, leaving Cynthia there to slowly look up from the floor to Seto.
"...hi?" Cynthia looked rather confused.
The first person to react was Hal. Hal dashed up to Cynthia and prodded the teenager in the chest suspiciously. "Why don't you have breasts? Are you really a girl?" Hal bounced on his heels.
"That's impossible! Her name is Cynthia! Of course she's female!" Casey-Ra smacked his
half-brother over the head.
Cynthia looked like 'she' wanted to curl up into a ball and die. 'She' settled for staring at the floor and mumbling something under 'her' breath.
"I'm sorry, I can't hear you." Malik said.
And then, in the deepest voice that he could conjure up, which was in a word, pathetic, Cynthia exclaimed, "I AM A BOY, DAMMIT."
Seto stared for a second, before burying his head in his hands, groaning loudly.
"All my children are freaks," he moaned.
"I'm not a freak!" Hal shrilled, ceasing his study of Cynthia.
"He's your child," Malik said, looking pointedly at Otogi. "Of course he's a freak." Cynthia wondered if this was a good environment, before deciding it was better then Pegasus.
"My father was an evil clown," Otogi shot back, returning the look. "Sometimes things skip a generation."
Finally, Seto looked up from his inner lament, glancing cautiously at Cynthia.
"You know colours- right?" he asked warily, not about to go through the colour ordeal again. (Hal had not been the best student of colours, as he learned from a children's TV show from a TV set that needed its colour adjusted).
"Like mauve?" Cynthia offered.
Seto had the sudden urge to fling his arms around the child, but resisted quite well.
Cynthia edged over to a chair and set himself down, looking at his new caretakers.
"Excuse me, girl-boy, you are in my chair." Casey-Ra suddenly loomed over Cynthia, looking as evil and malicious as possible. Malik sighed proudly.
"It doesn't have your name on it!" Cynthia retorted.
Casey-Ra pointed at the initials 'KC' on the chair.
He paused, taking out a pocket-knife from apparently nowhere and scratched '-Ra' beside it neatly. "It does now."
Cynthia quickly scooted off the seat and stood next to Hal, who started batting at his hair. Cynthia thought this was better then Casey-Ra, when Hal grabbed a fistful of curls and sniffed them. Underneath the wine, Hal's bizarrely acute sense of smell could detect...
"Are you wearing hair extensions?" Hal asked. Cynthia quickly grabbed his hair back and glowered. That was his hair, dammit. And sometimes hair needed help.
Malik and Otogi shared a glance, and then glared at Seto.
"Seto, can we have a little chat with you?"
In Seto's office, Malik and Otogi were glaring at him from his own office chair, the kind with the high back that made unexpected entrances fun. Malik was standing behind it, looming as best he could, and Otogi was sitting in the actual seat of the chair. Seto shifted uncomfortably.
"So, tell me, Seto, when, where, and why did you cheat on me- us, I mean?" Malik hissed.
Otogi didn't seem quite so worried. "Was it good?"
"I don't know. I was probably unconscious. Yes. I was unconscious." Seto answered, trying to remember. "It probably happened during the Duelist Kingdom tournament."
Malik leaned over the back of the chair. "Does that sound like Pegasus to you?" He whispered.
"I can still hear you." Seto said, but they ignored him.
Otogi nodded. The trio remained in silence, contemplating this. Malik began counting on his fingers, which seemed far more complicated than necessary. Then again, Malik had never had any formal education.
After a few moments, Malik tightened his palm into a fist. "Cynthia is older than Casey-Ra!" He exclaimed, looking somewhat disappointed.
Seto did the math in his head much quicker, and nodded. "But he's a Crawford, not a Kaiba."
"Oh. Good." Malik removed himself from the chair and exited, muttering something sounding like 'I didn't even talk to Pegasus'. Seto watched him leave, and then turned to Otogi.
"Are you absolutely sure you don't remember anything?"
"Yes. I'm sure."
An hour later, Cynthia was sitting on the edge of a bed, touching the ends of his hair and glowering. Hal had tried to remove the extensions, and then Casey-Ra had intervened with his pocket knife. His hair was now three inches shorter, and Casey-Ra and Hal were currently researching the explosive properties of custom-made hair extensions. This involved the microwave.
"Well, this will be your room for now. Keys to all the locks on your door are in the nightstand, and stay out of the basement. The lawyers eat anything with flesh down there." Otogi explained. He leaned against Cynthia's dresser. "You need anything?"
"A glass of Chianti, please."
"Aren't you a little young to drink wine?"
"Oh, fine."
Otogi smiled. "Welcome to the family, kid." He left the room, leaving Cynthia in relative silence.
Cynthia reached over to his luggage (it had appeared, seemingly, out of nowhere- Hal maintained that Pegasus employed ninjas to transport luggage) and unzipped a pocket, pulling out a small bottle of Chianti and unscrewed the top. Screw tops, he thought, were freaking amazing.
He sipped the wine and contemplated his surroundings. A loud explosion from downstairs confirmed that Casey-Ra and Hal's experiment had been a success, and he mourned the loss of perfectly good hair extensions and some of his actual hair.
And yet, this was still better than Pegasus.