Lullaby Chapter 3

[eiahmon]

Title: Lullaby Chapter 3
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: Longer chapter this time. Hopefully this will make up for the longer wait. XD

 

3.
March 2nd
Day 2
 

Atsushi stretched languidly under the warm blankets, unable to stop the smile of contentment that appeared on his lips. He could feel the warmth from sunlight streaming through a nearby window, and the smell of breakfast cooking drifted in from the kitchen. If he listened, he thought he could hear his mother singing to herself as she cooked. He smiled again and opened his eyes.

And reality crashed into him with the force of a speeding train.

He sat up with a gasp. He was not in his childhood bedroom at his parents' house, he was not actually three years old, and his parents had died years ago. He drew his knees up to his chest and laid his head down on them as he firmly ordered himself not to cry. He sat that way for a minute or two until he was sure he had his raging emotions under control before he raised his head and looked around.

He was in a spare bedroom in Ani's house, and he had only gotten the barest glimpses of it the night before as Ani had put him to bed. The room was sparse, with only the bed, a nightstand with a lamp, and a dresser. He didn't see any toys and felt disappointed for a brief moment before he reminded himself that he was less than a week away from turning 45; he was too old to be playing with toys.

They had waited until after nightfall to take him to Ani and Yuta's house, to lessen the chance of someone seeing him. Ani had carried him out, dressed in the clothes that had been bought for him and wrapped from head to toe in a blanket.

The problem of clothing for his smaller stature had been easily solved when it had occurred to Hisashi that all of them had nephews of various ages (Ani and Yuta even had a grand nephew.) so it would not be inconceivable that one of them might go out and pick up a few things for birthday gifts and such. A few rounds of Janken later (In which Hisashi's rock had destroyed Yuta's scissors, Hide's paper had slaughtered Ani's rock, and Hisashi's scissors had massacred Hide’s paper.) it was Hisashi that had been sent out, with Atsushi's yell of "Nothing too kiddy!" following him out the door, while he grumbled about not knowing that he had been “playing to lose.”

Atsushi kicked the blankets back and climbed out of bed, and it was then that he noticed he was wearing pajamas instead of a large shirt. He stopped to look down at them, and noted with relief that they were a solid pale blue and had no kiddy designs on them whatsoever. He then wondered how far Hisashi had gone to find them. He remembered Itsuki's toddler days well, and it seems like every piece of clothing made for children at that age had the most cutesy prints possible on them. Which made him wonder about the rest of the clothing that had been gotten for him. He had only seen the one outfit that they had dressed him in to take him to Ani and Yuta's house, and he had been too tired to really look at it. He vaguely remembered Yuta dressing him and being carried out of the house, and put to bed once at Ani's place, but nothing else.

His stomach growled, reminding him that finding something to eat was much more important than getting dressed, and he wandered out of the room and down the short hallway into the open room that overlooked the front entry. Ani and Yuta lived in a large house that had been converted into a duplex by the previous owners. The brothers owned it jointly and they had kept is as a duplex with each brother residing in a half. They had added doors between the two halves so they could visit without having to go outside, and they had redecorated to suit their own tastes but changed nothing structurally.

The sound of shuffling papers let him know that Ani was in the room, and a look to his left confirmed it. The drummer used the large open room as an office, while Yuta used the one he had on the other side of the wall as a entertainment area, with chairs, couches, a bar, and a large stereo. Ani looked up as he padded into the room.

“Good morning, Achan.” he said evenly as he looked back down at the stack of paperwork in front of him “How are you feeling?” Atsushi just wandered up and climbed into the drummer’s lap, much to his own, and Ani’s, surprise. Atsushi saw him smile out of the corner of his eye, and he felt his face heat up with embarrassment. He didn’t know why he had done that; it had just seemed a natural thing to do, and he had done it without thinking about it.

Ani sat back in his chair and put his arms around him. "It seems you do act your current age once in a while then." The drummer sounded amused.

Atsushi opted not to dignify that with an answer. "Stuff for Banker?"

Ani nodded. "If I had known just what I was getting into when you four talked me into being the CEO I would have run away screaming. I swear one of these days I'm going to drown in all this paperwork."

Atsushi giggled before he could stop himself, and Ani smiled again.

"Ready for breakfast?" he asked, and Atsushi nodded eagerly.

"Let's go see what Yuta's made us then." Atsushi slid off the drummer's lap and led the way through the door that led into Yuta's half of the house, down the stairs, through the entryway, and back into the combined kitchen and dining room. Yuta was putting a western style breakfast on the table, and he smiled when Atsushi and his brother came into the room. Atsushi climbed up into a chair to discover, much to his irritation, that he was just a little too short to reach the table. He did his best to ignore the amused grins on the brothers’ faces while he tried to figure out what to do about the situation. Before he could come to any conclusions, he was grasped under the arms and lifted up while a phone book was placed on the seat under him, and then he was set back down. He blushed again as the pair joined him at the table and kept his face turned away from them.

“If you’re going to eat, Achan,” Yuta pointed out “then you need to be facing your plate.”

Atsushi grumbled something unintelligible before he gave in and turned to face the table and began to eat. The two men and the one man in a child's body ate in silence, and once they were finished, Yuta started on the dishes, Ani took Atsushi back up to his room to get dressed for the day. After a quick stop at the upstairs bathroom on Ani's side (The others had been relieved to learn that Atsushi had indeed retained his potty training.) the pair went into Atsushi's room and began sorting through his clothes.

"Oh good," Atsushi commented "no kiddy designs in sight." Ani chuckled, and a short few minutes later, Atsushi was dressed in a pair of jeans and a long sleeved shirt that buttoned up the front. Once that was accomplished, Ani went back to his paperwork, and Atsushi wandered back over to Yuta's side of the house to see what the other was up to.

The bassist was done with the dishes and was settled down on his couch watching television, so Atsushi settled down next to him to watch.

Or at least he tried to. The show, some kind of documentary about the Meiji era, certainly was interesting, and he knew it would have captivated him before, but now his attention kept wandering, and he kept wanting to do something else, something more... hands on.

"Are you bored, Achan?" Yuta asked evenly, and Atsushi jumped at the sound of his voice before he nodded sheepishly.

"We thought that that might happen so...." Yuta reached down to the left side of the couch and pulled out a large plastic pail that clinked when it was moved "Hisashi picked this up too, just to be safe."

He set the pail of the floor, and Atsushi's eyes widened at the LEGO logo printed on the side, as he stared at it in surprise. Then a smile stretched across his face, and he happily scooted off the couch and onto the floor and pulled the lid off the pail. Within seconds, a large section of Yuta's living room floor was covered in the little plastic blocks as Atsushi assembled them with wild abandon. He barely noticed when, several minutes later, Ani jointed his brother on the couch, and the pair watched him with amused smiles, the documentary that Yuta had been watching forgotten.

Atsushi was well into covering his friend's floor with a Lego city when he heard Ani's phone sound from the other side of the house, so the drummer got up to go answer it. Atsushi could not hear what was being spoken, the location of Ani's living room was too far away for him to be heard, but he didn't have to. He knew what the subject of the conversation was: himself. BMG was likely wondering where in the hell he was, and why they had cancelled the recording session, as well as they interview that they'd had scheduled for the 4th. He looked down at the blocks in front of him, suddenly losing all interest in them as well as wondering why he was playing with children's toys at all. He was too old to be doing such a thing. He pushed the blocks away and scrambled back up onto the couch with Yuta.

"Aren't you going to play some more? the bassist asked without looking away from his show.

"Why did Hisashi get me those things? I'm not a baby. I don't need toys."

"Yet you certainly seemed to be enjoying them."

"I hadn't intended to do that."

Yuta looked away from the TV and ruffled Atsushi's hair affectionately. "There's nothing wrong with acting your age once in a while, Achan."

Atsushi smacked his hands away. "I'm soon to be 45 years old, Yutaka. Grown men don't play with children's toys."

"Yet little boys do, and like it or not, that's what you are right now."

"I am not!"

Yuta gave him a warning look over his tone, and Atsushi looked away, angry that he could be intimidated in such a way so easily. His parents had been the only ones capable of doing that to him, until now, and he hated it.

"It's just not fair, Yuta." he said quietly "I didn't ask for this."

He heard the bassist sigh behind him. "I know you didn't, Achan, and I know you're having a hard time with it. It's not easy for the rest of us, either."

Ani came back into the room them. He stopped when he saw the two and spent a brief moment looking back and forth between his brother and his friend as he wondered what he had missed before he spoke.

"That was our manager." he said "He wanted to know what had happened to us and why we had cancelled everything."

"What did you tell him?" Atsushi asked.

The drummer shrugged. "The story that we agreed upon. I told him that you're sick and have lost your voice completely, so you can't even leave your house for several days. I told him that the rest of us would be in to record our parts later, but not today."

"Did he believe you?" Yuta asked.

The elder man shrugged again. "I think so. I hope so anyway." He looked over at the clock hanging on the wall over the TV. "I'm going to start on some lunch. If you're hungry, wander over in about twenty minutes or so."

Atsushi looked up at the clock himself and was surprised to see that it was almost one in the afternoon. He looked over at Yuta, and the other just smiled and chuckled.

"You were really enjoying those Lego blocks."

“I must have been.” He eased down off the couch and started to put the blocks back in their bucket, all the while trying to ignore the amused smile of the man on the couch behind him. As he did so, he noticed that his eyes were starting to feel a little heavy, and he kept rubbing at them without thinking about it.

"Looks like you'll be ready for a nap after lunch." Yuta commented as he helped put the rest of the blocks away, and Atsushi just nodded. Once the blocks were all in their storage bucket and the bucket had been put away out of the sight of anyone that might drop by unexpectedly, the pair walked over to the other half of the house to see what was for lunch.

Lunch was a simple affair, just ham sandwiches and potato chips, and by the time they were done, Atsushi was nodding off in his chair. So he didn’t object when he was lifted up out of his chair and carried upstairs to bed, and he was asleep as soon as his head touched the pillow.

*****

Atsushi slept solidly for two hours, and when he woke up, he spent a moment to smooth out his rumpled clothes before he wandered back downstairs. He didn’t see the brothers in the office, kitchen, or the living room, and he wondered if they had taken off and left him, despite their insistence that he couldn’t be alone. He felt himself growing irritated, and more than a little frightened for reasons that he couldn’t name, when he heard the faint strains of guitar music coming from the back room where Ani kept a few of his drum kits. He ran back through the hallway and spotted Hide seated back there, one of his guitars on his lap, strumming absently. He didn’t pause in his running, and Hide had just enough time to put his guitar to the side before he had a lapful of shaking child.

“What’s wrong, Achan?” Hide asked as he put his arms around the miniature vocalist and squeezed him reassuringly.

Atsushi sniffled and told himself firmly that no crying was allowed. “Couldn’t find anyone. Thought they had left me all alone.”

“Ani thought it best if he and Yuta went ahead and went into the studio for a bit, to hopefully allay any suspicions. So they asked me to come and stay with you while they were gone.”

“Suspicions?”

“We’ve all be sick before, but that’s never kept us away from our work, so we agreed that it was a good idea if the rest of us act as normal as possible. If we’re acting strangely, it might make people worry about you and go to your house and investigate.”

“And if they don’t find me there, they’ll look here. I get it.”

“That and while we did clean up your and Sakura’s bedroom, anyone who looks around in there will be tipped off by all the missing objects that something happened there.”

“How am I going to explain that to her?”

“I don’t know. I’m more worried about how we’re going to explain your smaller size.”

"I'm trying not to think about that."

Atsushi tucked his head under the guitarist's chin and nestled close. It bothered him how much the thought of being left alone had frightened him, and he hoped that Hide wouldn't shoo him off, even as he kicked himself for letting his current age dictate his actions and feelings.

"We're never going to leave you alone, Atsushi." Hide said quietly as he gave the man/child on his lap another squeeze. "One of us will always be with you."

"I don't know what is wrong with me, Hide. I don't know why I find the idea of playing with blocks for hours appealing or why I would be perfectly happy to sit here on your lap and let you hold me. I don't understand why the smallest thing makes me want to cry or why the idea that I was left alone scared me. I don't understand any of this."

"You are a child right now, Atsushi. You have 45 years worth of memories in your head, but physically you are a small child. So it's no surprise that sometimes you act like one."

"But it's so embarrassing. Whenever I do something like that, everyone looks at me like it's the funniest thing they've ever seen. And then when I cry..."

"When you do something like build a Lego city on Yuta's floor, it is fun to watch, because we never see you enjoying yourself like that normally. And we don't find it funny when you cry, Achan. We understand that your feelings are gong to be a little touchy and out of control right now, and we'll try not to upset you. We don't like to see you upset and crying anymore that you do."

"Were you always this rational, or is this a new thing?"

The guitarist laughed. "Just trying to explain a few things to you. And now I've got something that I want you to explain to me."

Atsushi looked up at him. "What?"

"Who destroyed your bedroom?"

Atsushi turned away so quickly, he felt his neck pop. "I don't know."

"It wasn't you?"

"No, I don't know who it was."

"Are you sure? Because I can't imagine Sakura making that kind of mess, and even if she did, I don't know how you could have slept through it."

"I don't know, Hidehiko; it was like that when I woke up. Can we talk about something else now?"

"Like what?"

"Like.... what were you playing when I came in? Were you writing a song?"

Hide gave him a searching look before he accepted the subject change. "No, not really, just seeing what I could come up with. I had something in mind, and I was wondering what it sounded like..." The guitarist talked on about what he had been playing, and Atsushi tuned him out. He restrained a relieved sigh that wanted to escape, relieved that Hide had not pressed the issue of the destroyed bedroom. He knew exactly how it had been wrecked, and who had done it, but he wasn't about to say who, because it would lead to other questions, questions that he didn't want to answer. So he pretended to be interested as Hide told him about what he had been playing and hoped that the subject of his wrecked bedroom wouldn't come up again.

*****

Ani and Yuta returned around eight that night with Hisashi in tow, and with pizza for five. Atsushi and Hide had been watching a movie (Or at least Hide had been; Atsushi had been curled up next to him, half asleep.), but they had happily joined the others in the kitchen for supper. Atsushi's smaller stomach had only been able to accommodate two slices before he was full, and he had sat back and sleepily listened to the conversation going on around him before Yuta noticed his state.

“Bedtime for you, Achan.” he said as he stood up and lifted Atsushi up into his arms. He turned his head so he was facing the three still seated at the table. “Why do children weigh as twice as much when they’re sleeping?”

Atsushi wanted to protest that he wasn’t a child, thank you very much, but it seemed to be too much of a waste of energy, so he kept quiet as the others wished him goodnight and Yuta carried him up to bed. He didn’t fuss as he was dressed in his pajamas, too tired to complain that he could dress himself. He smiled sleepily as he laid down and Yuta tucked him under the blankets.

“Goodnight, Yuta.”

“Goodnight, Achan.” He felt Yuta gently smooth his hair back from his forehead, and he snuggled into the comfort of the blankets as the bassist walked out of the room, shutting the door behind him.

Chapter 2 -- Chapter 4
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