Lullaby Chapter 2

[eiahmon]

Title: Lullaby Chapter 2
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 know I said a couple days, but my job made a liar out of me. XD

2.

Yuta had managed to pry Atsushi out of the corner long enough to get him into a t-shirt, which was so large on his small body that it hung on him like a dress. He then wrapped him in a blanket that had miraculously gotten no glass on it and settled down in a chair with the miniature vocalist in his arms. Atsushi resisted the embrace at first and squirmed for several minutes before giving up when he realized that the bassist wasn't going to put him down. He then tucked his head under the younger? older? man's chin and closed his eyes with a sigh. He couldn't remember the last time he had been held in such a way, and it was strangely... comforting. The pair sat in silence for a few minutes before Yuta asked the question that had been bothering him ever since he realized the identity of the child in the corner.

"What happened, Achan?"

Atsushi didn't answer at first, instead he only turned his head and hid his face in Yuta's shirt. He felt one of Yuta's hands gently stroking his hair, and he sighed at the soothing gesture.

"Achan?"

"I don't know." he mumbled into Yuta's shirt. "I was normal when I went to bed last night, and when I woke up, I was like this. I don't remember anything of how this happened." He sniffled again and swallowed a lump in his throat. He was not going to cry again.

"Did Sakura see you like this?"

"I don't know." Atsushi wiped his nose with the back of his hand. "She was already gone when I woke up, so I don't know if she saw me or not.”

"Where did she go? Do you expect her back soon?"

"No, she gone to visit some of her relatives up in Hokkaido, and she won't be back until my birthday." Without realizing that he was doing it, he snuggled closer to Yuta and felt the bassist's arms tighten around him for a brief moment. "What am I going to do, Yuta?"

"We'll figure something out, Achan. It'll be alright."

Atsushi raised his head and looked at him. "But how will we explain this to the others? What about the recording and photoshoots we have to do? What if I'm like this for the rest of my life? What am I going to do?" His chest hitched a few times and tears began to stream out of his eyes. "I'm scared, Yuta." And then he was wailing in his friend’s arms, despite his firm resolve not to cry again, and no matter how many times he told himself that he wasn’t really a little boy, he couldn’t stop himself. Yuta's arms held him closer as he bawled unabashedly, soaking the material of his friend’s shirt with his tears. Yuta rocked him and stroked his hair and kept silent while he cried himself out. When his sobs had dropped down to sniffles and hiccups, Yuta stood up and carried him out of the wrecked bedroom and downstairs to the living room.

Atsushi scrubbed at his tear damp face with one balled up fist as he was laid on the couch. Yuta gently smoothed his sweaty hair back from his forehead, and he smiled wearily at the bassist in thanks for the comfort.

“Why don’t you take a quick nap, Achan?” Yuta asked as he sat down on the floor beside the couch “While I call the others and try to explain...” He seemed at a loss for words for a moment, before he simply gestured at Atsushi’s scaled down form. “...this.”

Atsushi couldn’t help it; the reminder that he had changed so much in such a drastic way was too much. His chest hitched again and tears began trickling out of the corners of his eyes and running down into his hair.

“Oh Achan, please don’t cry again.” Atsushi rolled over onto his side, facing Yuta, and curled up in a ball, while he tried to hold back that choking sobs that were trying to claw their way out of his throat. He didn’t understand why he was so touchy - well, he supposed that waking up to find that over 40 years had somehow been knocked off your age overnight would screw with one’s feelings a bit, but it wasn’t like he was a child mentally. He shouldn’t be crying so much. Though he did admit to himself, as Yuta stroked his hair and rubbed his back, it was nice to be loved on like this.

After a few minutes, he managed to bring the crying to a stop just as Yuta’s phone rang loudly in the quiet house, startling them both. Yuta looked at the tiny display screen and stood up.

“Go to sleep, Achan.” he said quietly as he flipped the phone open to answer it.

Atsushi nodded tiredly; he had forgotten how exhausting crying could be. His nose was plugged up, and he had a pounding headache. Closing his eyes, he nestled down into the blanket around him, and he felt Yuta gently tucking it around his neck and shoulders as he dozed off.

*****

“He’s WHAT?!”

It was Ani’s voice, raised in shock that startled Atsushi awake barely an hour later. He sat up on the couch and looked through the doorway through the entryway and into the dining room, where he could see his friends seated around the table.

“Ani, please,” Yuta said quietly with a note of pleading in his voice. “You’ll wake him up.”

"You have to admit though, Yuta, that this is hard to believe." Hide pointed out evenly.

"You all looked at him when you came in. It's him, I'm telling you. I don't know how it could have happened, but that is Achan in there."

Atsushi wiggled out of the blanket and toddled quietly out into the entryway, where he huddled just outside the dining room doorway to listen.

"How in the hell did this happen?" he heard Hisashi, who still sounded as though he was seriously hung over, ask.

"I don't know. He said he was fine when he went to sleep last night, and he was like this when he woke up this morning."

"The question we should be asking is, what do we do now?" Hide pointed out "We'll have to keep him hidden, since there is no way we can explain this, and most wouldn't believe it anyway."

"I've seen him with my own eyes," Ani grumbled "and I'm having a hard time believing it."

"One of us will have to take him." Hisashi said, and Atsushi could picture him with his elbows on the table, holding his head in his hands like he was trying to hold it together against the force of his alcohol induced headache. "We can't leave him alone. He's just a kid."

I am not a kid! Atsushi thought viciously, and he had to strongly resist the urge to pout.

"Well, I can't take him. "Hide said firmly "How would I explain it to Hana?"

Atsushi winced at that; he liked Hide's wife, but he could just imagine the screeching attack that would happen if she were to see him in his current state.

"I can't either." Hisashi added "Kaori would accuse me of pulling some twisted prank and make me sleep on the couch for a month."

The room fell silent then, and though Atsushi couldn't see them, he just knew that Ani and Yuta were looking at each other, debating without saying a word which one would be stuck with him.

"The problem is," Ani said quietly "is that none of us are really prepared to care for a child, even if that child is our close friend and vocalist that's currently trapped in a small body."

"I don't know anything about kids." Yuta added "Nothing at all. How often does he have to eat? How much sleep does he need? Is he -" Here, Yuta gulped. "- potty trained? Can he bathe himself, or do we have to help him?'

"You seem to have done fine with him so far." Hisashi pointed out.

"Yeah, but..."

"Maybe you both should take him, and just stay together in one house until he's back to normal." Hide suggested quietly "That way you're both nearby in case you're needed, and one of you can go do whatever and the other can stay at home with him. That way you can trade off, and no one will be wondering why one of you has suddenly disappeared."

Atsushi heard a two part sigh, one from Yuta, the other from Ani. "Alright," Ani agreed "we can do that."

Yuta didn't say anything, but Atsushi knew that he was likely nodding in agreement. He felt like pouting again; why were they deciding his future without consulting him? Didn't he get a say? Okay, so he was stuck in a little kid's body, but he was still a grown man in his head; he could stay at home and take care of himself. He heard his friends getting up from the table, and he plopped down on the floor, feeling more than a little put out with them. He heard them filing out of the room, and he didn't bother to look up when one of them stopped by where he was sitting.

"Were you listening, Achan?" Yuta asked softly.

Atsushi only huffed in response, and told himself very firmly that he was NOT pouting, that he was just a little angry with them. Yuta knelt down beside him.

"You can't stay here by yourself, Achan." he said "How would you take care of yourself? What if you were hurt or sick? Ani and I are going to take you home, and we'll take care of you."

"I can take care of myself." Atsushi all but growled at him "I'm not a baby!"

"No, you're not, but like it or not, you're a small boy right now, and we can't leave you alone. And how do you expect to feed yourself? How are you going to reach the stove or the countertop? I imagine that you'd have a hard time pulling the fridge open if you tried right now."

Alright, he could admit it; he was pouting. "But I want to stay here. Can't we just call Sakura and ask her to come home?"

"Do you really think she'd believe you? And if she did come home, how would you think she'd react to seeing you like this?"

"You believed it, and none of you reacted badly."

"We all saw you with our own eyes, and do you want to call her home on a chance?"

Atsushi thought about it for a second, then he shook his head and sighed, but about halfway through, the sigh was interrupted by a jaw cracking yawn. He heard Ani, Hisashi, and Hide chuckle as Yuta stood up, grasped him under the arms and hefted him up. He laid his head down on the bassist's shoulder as he was carried back into the living room and deposited back on the couch. Yuta and Ani settled down on either side of him, and Hide and Hisashi found chairs nearby. The five of them were silent for a while, lost in thought, before Atsushi's stomach growled loudly, reminding him that he hadn't eaten since the previous night. They all looked at him, and he blushed.

"I'm sorry," he mumbled "but I guess de-aging is hungry work."

There was laughter from the other four in the room, and Hide got to his feet and headed for the door.

"I'll go get us something." he said with an amused smile as he put his shoes and coat on, and with that he stepped out the door.

"There is one other thing." Ani spoke up. "What are you going to wear?" He reached over and plucked at the sleeve of the shirt that Atsushi was wearing. "Needless to say, all of your clothes are too big for you, and I'm sure that none of us have clothing for a small child just lying around that you can use."

"We can't exactly take you shopping either." Hisashi said "Pictures of us out with a strange child would be all over the papers within hours, amid much speculation of whose child you were."

“You don’t have any old clothes of Itsuki’s, do you?” Yuta asked hopefully.

Atsushi shook his head. “No, his mother has all of that.”

“We could always just let you run around naked.” Ani suggested with a cheeky grin.

“NO!”

“Oh come on, Achan,” Hisashi laughed “You can’t leave the house, so who would see you, other than us. And you don’t have anything that we haven’t seen before.”

“I am NOT going around naked, Hisashi!”

Even Yuta was laughing now. “It won’t be that bad, Achan, you might feel a draft every now and then, but nothing too horrible.”

“I can’t believe you three are laughing at me over this!” Oh, for the love of...! Great, he was crying again. When had he become such a crybaby? The laughter around him quickly stopped, and he felt a pair of arms scoop him up and sit him down on a lap.

“We’re sorry, Atsushi.” Ani murmured into his hair “We weren’t thinking about how hard this is for you.” Atsushi hid his face in the drummer’s shirt as he felt his adopted brother wrap his arms around him. Damn it, he was a grown man, even though he was currently in a small body, and he didn’t need to be held and cuddled. Bu oh, it felt so nice.

A second later, he felt Yuta scoot closer as someone else - Hisashi, likely - sat down on Ani’s other side.

“It will be alright, Achan.” he heard Hisashi say behind him as Yuta took one of his hands and gently squeezed it. He sighed, nestled against Ani’s chest, and closed his eyes.

“Get some rest, Achan.” Ani said quietly “We’ll wake you up when it’s time to eat.”

Atsushi nodded sleepily and felt his blanket being laid over him and tucked in as he nodded off.

A/N: I keep picturing a mini Achan snuggled in Yuta’s arms. Makes for some cute imagery. XD

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