![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Lullaby Chapter 1
Title: Lullaby
Pairing: none
Rating: PG-13
Warning: Pure crack, fluff, and weirdness in spades.
Summary: Atsushi wakes up one morning to find that he has somehow undergone a drastic change, and he is NOT happy about it. For that matter, neither are his bandmates.
A/N: I blames this on a long running series of dreams that I’ve been having for the past few years that always feature a child Atsushi. Maybe if I write this, they’ll go away. XD For some reason in these dreams, Atsushi is simply a scaled down version of his adult self. So that chubby cheeked cutie we all know and love from his childhood photos is absent, and in his place is an adult looking Atsushi that’s about the size of a two or three year old. He has a child’s voice, and his sleeping, eating, and some of his behavior patterns are like those of a young child, but he looks like a miniature adult.
1.
"Where is he?" Yagami Toll said impatiently as he tapped his foot against the polished wooden floor of the recording studio. "He's late."
"Which is perfectly acceptable, considering the night we had last night." his brother, Higuchi Yutaka, reminded him. The drummer shot a glance at his younger brother, but the bassist was absorbed in his instrument, no doubt doing a final check to make sure that all was in readiness for the recording session that they were about to do. As soon as Atsushi gets here. he thought.
"We did have a good time last night." Hoshino Hidehiko remarked as he skimmed over the sheet music that he was holding in his hand.
Toll looked over at the band's other guitarist, but Imai Hisashi seemed oblivious to the rest of them. As a matter of fact, he looked like he had rolled out of bed after only a few minutes before coming into the studio and was still in the grip of his hangover.
"Settle down, Ani." Yuta said as he put his bass aside on its stand "If he's not here within a half hour I'll go drag him out of bed myself."
"Why don't we just call him?" Hide asked without looking up from the music sheets. The drummer and the bassist looked at each other, shrugged as one, and Yuta pulled his cell phone out of its carrier on his belt and dialed Atsushi's number from memory. Atsushi's phone rang and rang, but no one picked it up, and Yuta figured that Atsushi's wife, Sakura must not be home, otherwise she would have picked it up if her husband hadn't.
The bassist closed his phone and put it back in its holder. "He's not answering, so maybe he's in the shower or something." Toll nodded in silent agreement and went out of the room and over to where his drums were set up.
A half hour or so later, a groan from the couch sounded in the room, and everyone turned to see that Hisashi had rejoined the land of the living.
"Is Achan here yet?" he asked blearily as he blinked his eyes open. He then promptly groaned again and slammed them shut as the bright lights of the control room hit them.
Yuta looked up at the clock. "No, he isn't, so I guess I'd better go get him before Ani rips his hair out." He looked through the glass window into the main part of the studio, where he could see his brother seated behind his drums and smoking a cigarette. As he watched, the older man looked up at the clock impatiently and tapped his foot against the floor again.
Hide chuckled. “His fans would collapse in shock if he ever showed up without his signature Tollhawk.”
Yuta rolled his eyes and did not dignify that with an answer as he gathered up his coat, hat, and gloves and walked out of the studio, out of the building, and into the parking lot. The blast of frigid air that met him at the door made him contemplate turning around and going right back inside, but he reminded himself that Atsushi was home alone, and if he was hurt or sick, then he needed to be checked on.
The bassist unlocked his car and hurriedly got in and shut the door, closing out the freezing air. He started the engine and sat back while he waited for the engine to warm up so he could turn the heater on. He pulled his gloves off and blew on his hands as he kept on eye on the engine’s temperature gauge, waiting for it to start moving.
March 1st, a week before Achan’s birthday, and Mother Nature decided that they needed another taste of winter’s fury before it could start warming up. Yuta hoped that the weather would ease up before the 7th since they were scheduled to do an outdoor photoshoot on that day, and he didn’t feel like being stuck outside all day in freezing temperatures. He remembered the filming of the Heaven PV quite well, and while he thought the PV was excellent, filming it while wearing clothes not near heavy enough for the weather was not something that he ever wanted to experience again. They had teased him about dropping one of his picks on the ground, when it should have been no surprise, being that his fingers had gone numb and stiffened up pretty quickly.
Yuta glanced at the temperature gauge again and figured that the engine was warm enough, so he flipped the heater switch to the ON position and cranked the control dial up as high as it would go. He leaned back in the seat and sighed in sweet relief at the warm air that blew out of the vents and brushed against his cold cheeks. Putting the engine into drive, he drove out of the parking lot and into the busy streets of Tokyo.
It was a forty-five minute drive to Atsushi’s house, and during the trip, Yuta tried three more times to call him, and each time, he got no answer. Damn, what the hell was going on? Now seriously worried, he sped the rest of the way to Atsushi’s house, and when he pulled up in the driveway, he saw that Sakura was indeed gone, her little red car was not in the driveway, but Atsushi’s sleek, black sports car was. Yuta shut the engine off and got out, so worried about his friend that he didn’t notice as the wind drove bits of snow and ice into his skin like little shards of glass. He went up the front walk to the door, glad that the side of the house partially sheltered him from the biting wind and knocked on the door, noting that there was no sound or signs of movement inside.
“Achan?” he called “Are you home?”
No voice called out in greeting from within the house, there was no sound of footsteps hurrying to answer the door. The house remained silent and still.
“Achan!” He knocked again. “Are you in there? Is everything okay?” Again no answer, and a cold knot of fear for his friend settled in Yuta’s belly. He could think of no reason why Atsushi wasn’t answering the door, unless he was injured or ill, so he dug around in his pockets for his keys and hunted through the bunch of keys on the ring for the key that would open the door in front of him. They all had keys to each others homes, in case they ever needed to put each other to bed after a hard night or partying or if they ever needed a place to stay in a pinch. Finding it, the unlocked the door lock and the deadbolt and opened the door, calling out again as he stepped inside.
“Achan?” His voice echoed down the short entry hall and into the living room, both of which held no signs that anyone was home. Maybe Atsushi had gone with Sakura to wherever she had gone? Yuta quickly dismissed that thought; he would have called them and told him that he wasn’t going to be able to make it in to the studio, and he would have answered his phone when called.
Pausing just long enough to toe his shoes off, Yuta proceeded into the rest of the house, calling out for Atsushi as he went. The first floor was deserted, and he went up the stairs to the second floor, hoping that Atsushi was asleep with his phone turned off or something equally benign. He walked down the second floor hall, past the bathroom and past the bedroom that Atsushi’s teenaged son, Itsuki, used when he came to visit.
“Achan?”
Wait. Yuta paused several feet from the door to the master bedroom. He heard something... A sniffle? Was someone crying?
“Achan?”
“Go away!”
The voice echoed loudly through the otherwise silent hallway, and Yuta knew that it was the voice of a child, a young child most likely, though he thought somehow that it sounded strangely familiar. Maybe one of Atsushi’s nieces or nephews had come over to visit unexpectedly and was upset and finding an empty house.
“Who’s here?”
“I said GO AWAY!” The last two words were screamed out, and Yuta practically ran down the rest of the hallway and through the open door into the master bedroom. He stopped just inside the door and looked around in shock. The room was destroyed, as if someone, in a fit of rage, had taken every movable object and thrown it against the walls and floor. Clothes were scattered about and framed pictures, with the glass lying on the floor in shattered fragments, were lying around, the wood of the frames broken in many cases. The top of Sakura’s vanity had been cleared, and a pile of broken bottles lay on the floor to the left, like someone had just swept them off onto the floor. Had Atsushi and Sakura gotten into a fight?
The bassist looked around the destroyed bedroom and caught a flash of dark hair on the other side of the bed. Mindful of the broken glass that was lying everywhere, he walked around the bed to see a small naked child, probably not even three, huddled in the corner furthest from the door.
“Hello,” he said softly, not wanting to upset the obviously distressed child even more “What’s your name?”
The child - Yuta thought it was a boy, but he wasn’t sure since he couldn’t see the face - didn’t answer, instead he only curled up in an even tighter ball and tried to back up closer to the wall.
“Are you alright? Aren’t you going to look at me?” The boy sniffled again, and Yuta crouched down on his haunches.
“Why are you here all alone? Where are your parents?”
Another sniffle and... “Please just go away, Yuta.” The boy shifted as he spoke and turned his head away from the wall to look at the startled bassist. The boy's - Yuta could see that it was definitely a boy - glossy black hair fell over his face, and a pair of chocolate brown eyes stared out through the gaps between the sweat soaked strands. The boy dragged his sweaty hair out of his face, and Yuta rocked backwards and fell on his ass in shock as he wondered when Atsushi and Sakura had a son and how they managed to keep his existence a secret for so long. Looking back at him was a Sakurai Atsushi in miniature, right down to the hairstyle that he had gotten just a few short weeks ago. The body was small, but the face structure and the proportion of the limbs and head to the rest was that of an adult. His eyes were puffy and red rimmed, and his face was wet with tears, and the question popped out before Yuta could stop it.
“Is that you, Achan?”
The boy - Atsushi - nodded miserably, and he burst into fresh tears and began to sob.
Yuta fainted.
-- Chapter 2
Back to the Archive