Words: 1661
Squicks: character humiliation, implied lesbianism, unadulterated silliness
Pairings: Sesshoumaru + Inutaisho, side Inutaisho/Sessmom
Summary: Why does Sesshoumaru hate Tenseiga so much?
Author's Notes: Originally written for the "weapon" theme at the LJ 30shards community.
His wife was shiny with sweat, but radiant. For a change. She'd been rather cranky these past few months, though he couldn't blame her - their son was quite robust, apparently. He certainly sounded like it.
"What's his name?" Miyu yelled over the sound of their son's screaming; impressively she kept her happy smile plastered to her face as she did so. The midwife, kneeling off to the side and scrubbing at her dirty hands, did not look nearly as overjoyed.
Inutaisho turned his eyes from her grin to the little screaming, wrinkled lump in his wife's arms. He stared at it, his mind going blank as he struggled to remember the name he had carefully constructed for his firstborn son, which now seemed so difficult to recall in the face of... well, in the face of his firstborn son. It really was amazing, he reflected, that more people weren't named Squirmy or Shutupyou.
"Sesshoumaru," he said finally. "His name is Sesshoumaru."
The happy look on his wife's face faltered for a moment. "That's a bit bloodthirsty," she said after a second's thought, the look of disapproval in her eyes greeting him like an old friend.
"Hey," Inutaisho said, "he's my son! He needs a name that will strike fear into the hearts of all who oppose him!"
"Mm," his wife replied, noncommittally.
Inutaisho decided to ignore her and looked back at his son, who was inspecting his own small, perfectly formed claws.
Then, with both parents watching, the little baby brought his hands together, missed, and dragged his claws down the inside of his own arm.
Blood began to stream out of the deep cuts. For a moment all was quiet before the pain caught up with the little boy and he began to scream again.
Miyu and Inutaisho stared down at their son as the midwife threw her hands in the air and began to bustle about, looking for extra bandages.
"Er..." Inutaisho said after a long moment, "he'll grow out of that, right?"
His wife just gave him a look.
Sesshoumaru screamed.
Sesshoumaru looked at the sword laid on the dojo floor with curious saucer eyes. Cautiously he stretched out his fingers to touch it.
Inutaisho smacked his hand.
"No!" he scolded. "Bad Sesshoumaru! You aren't allowed to handle a sword until you stop tripping on the steps."
The boy looked sullenly up at him. "I only trip going up," he muttered.
"And you fall when you go down!"
"Dear!" his wife said sharply. Guiltily, Inutaisho turned to see her sitting serenely at the edge of the floor doing something girly and boring with bits of cloth.
He gave her his best I'm In Charge glare. "I'm only trying to correct him," he said defensively. "Maybe if he's embarrassed he'll get over his clumsiness."
Miyu raised an eyebrow. "Perhaps I should try the same tactic on you," she said.
"Ah, but I'm not clumsy!" Inutaisho pointed out.
Her other eyebrow rose to join the first.
"That's news," she said primly, and turned back to her task.
Feeling that it was best to ignore her, Inutaisho turned back to his son, who had been watching his parents with wide eyes.
"Now, son," he said imperiously, lifting a bokken down from the wall, "you will learn with this."
Sesshoumaru looked doubtful.
"It's wood," he said.
"Yes, it is," Miyu said. "Dear, don't you think he'd be better off starting with a shi - "
Inutaisho was rapidly losing patience. "Quiet, woman! I was already laying waste to the countryside when I was his age! It's time he learned!"
His wife sighed.
Blood boiling, he turned to his son.
"Here," he said, "you put this hand here, and this hand here... good, good, now center your body over your feet like this - no, not like that, like this... good! Now you... slice!"
With a look of deep concentration, Sesshoumaru lifted the sword and promptly hit himself in the head with it.
For a moment, no one in the dojo said a word. Then the boy wavered and staggered forward, bleeding from a deep gash at his crown.
"Um," Inutaisho said.
"Oh, my," his wife said brightly, "what will you say now, dear?"
"Shut up, woman!"
Inutaisho thought frantically as, dazedly, the boy reached back and touched his head. Tears welled in his son's eyes.
"Congratulations!" Inutaisho blurted. "That! Uh..."
He shrugged helplessly. "That really is an excellent wound," he finally said over the sound of Sesshoumaru's horrified sniffling, "even if you did do it to yourself."
"Dear!"
Sesshoumaru wailed, whirled in place, tripped, and fell.
Inutaisho covered his eyes.
"How," Inutaisho said, slowly and patiently, "did you manage to break your own nose with your own knee?"
"Dunno," Sesshoumaru said.
"And how did the duck get skewered to the dojo ceiling?"
"Practice."
"You aren't even trying!" Inutaisho yelled for the hundredth time, looming over the boy and trying to contain his anger. He could feel a vein throbbing in his temple, and there was a strange pain in his scalp.
Sesshoumaru looked away, seemingly bored with the whole endeavor. "It's hard to concentrate on something I don't like," he said sullenly.
"You can't not like combat training!" Inutaisho told him firmly. "You're going to be a warlord. Warlords wage war, right? With... you know, swords and such. You've got to like it! You've got no choice."
"But I don't want to be a warlord," his son said. Absently he rubbed a scar on his neck.
"Well what the hell else do you think you're going to be?"
Sesshoumaru looked at his father somewhat dubiously from the corner of his eye.
"I want to be an ink-painter," he said simply.
The pain in his scalp intensified, and belatedly Inutaisho realized that he was pulling his own hair out. With great restraint he uncurled his fingers and moved them to his sides, where he gripped his hakama on the off-chance that strangling his son would be a bad idea. "Who," he said slowly, "put that idea in your head?"
"Hahaue."
Oh, really? Inutaisho thought. Excellent. Is it normal to want to murder one's entire family? "And why," he ventured, "did your mother suggest that you become an ink-painter?"
The boy shrugged, managing to ooze both indifference and insolence. "She said artists get more girls."
"You're too young to be thinking of girls!"
"Hahaue said it's never too early to be thinking about girls, since she says eventually I'll want naked women throwing themselves at me."
"What?"
His son gave him a very patient look. "She says painters can get women to take their clothes off easier than warriors, and you only have to worry about husbands coming after you instead of armies. She also told me that there's less wear and tear on kimonos, too, but I'm not certain what she meant by that."
Inutaisho felt the beginnings of a headache happily bubbling up behind his right eye. He could think of only one thing to say.
"What is it with your mother and naked women, anyway?"
"I'm sure I don't know, chichiue," said Sesshoumaru, who always seemed to know a lot of things that he didn't know anything about.
"Well, it has to cut something!" Toutousai shouted.
"Why?" Inutaisho demanded. "Why's it got to cut something?"
"Because it's a damn sword for god's sake! Swords cut things! It's what they do! End of story!"
"Well... make it cut trees. I don't care."
"Fool, that's what we have axes for. Swords cut people."
"Axes cut people, too," Inutaisho pointed out.
"Axes cut people badly," Toutousai said. "Swords are meant to cut people."
"But I don't want it to kill anyone. Can't it just... you know, cut people who are already dead or something?"
"You want to carve up dead bodies for fun? That's a little sick."
"No," Inutaisho snapped. "I just don't want it to hurt anyone."
"Once again I have to ask, why not?"
"I said that's none of your business!" Inutaisho yelled. "Can you do this or not?"
"Fine!" Toutousai said, holding up his hands. He appeared to think for a moment, idly scratching an armpit before he seemed to arrive at a solution.
"How about spirits? It could cut spirits. You could even bring people back to life with it, if I made a sword that could cut things from the other world."
"Really?" Inutaisho asked, trying to keep the eagerness from his voice. "That sounds... interesting. Kind of sexy. You know, Miyu's not very fond of killing things. I bet she would really dig a sword like that."
"Um," Toutousai said.
Inutaisho wasn't paying attention. "You know," he mused thoughtfully, stroking his chin, "now that I think of it, why don't you make me two swords? One that kills and one that saves. I think she'd like that. I bet she'd be all impressed if I could kill people and then bring people back from the dead."
Toutousai rolled his eyes. "Somehow I doubt your wife is very impressed by swords," he mumbled, turning to his forge.
"What was that?"
"Oh, nothing."
"And this is my new sword?"
"Yes!"
"...That can't cut anything?"
Inutaisho coughed. "Er, not exactly - "
The boy studied the weapon for a moment longer, and then glared at his father.
"And you'll never let me be an ink painter?" he said accusingly.
For some reason, Inutaisho felt guilty. "No," he replied, rather more firmly than necessary.
For a moment longer the boy glowered. Then he turned away and with curt, angry movements, executed a flawless kata.
Inutaisho stared.
His son turned and looked up at him innocently.
"Have you... all this time...?" Inutaisho stammered after a moment.
Sesshoumaru shrugged. "Come on, chichiue, this sword is a joke."
Very quietly, Inutaisho ground his teeth, but his son seemed not to notice. Instead Inutaisho watched with a sinking heart as his son peered curiously around the dojo.
"So!" he said brightly, turning to his father with hope in his eyes, "where'd you hide the real one?"