eiahmon | Lullaby Chapter 7

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.

7
March 7th
Day 7

I'm tired.

I want my old body back.

I don't want to be a little boy anymore.

Are you sure this is what you want?

...yes.

Very well.

Atsushi's eyes flew open, and he screamed as his bones cracked and his skin and muscles stretched until he thought that they must tear. He heard the wind in the room howling in his ears as he screamed his throat raw. He could faintly hear Ani cursing as the drummer tried to find a place to hide from the windstorm that had suddenly sprung up in his bedroom. Atsushi could only barely hear his own voice as he screamed out his agony.

And then, it stopped.

Atsushi laid on the bed in the now wrecked bedroom, gasping for breath. As Ani cautiously crawled out from his hiding place, Atsushi raised up his arms and looked at his hands.

His adult sized hands.

He raised his head up from the pillow and looked down at himself. His child sized pajamas had ripped apart at the seams during his extremely rapid growth, and he could see that every mark, every mole, and every freckle was exactly where it was supposed to be. He was also soaked with sweat; his fever had broken.

Atsushi let his head flop back down to the pillow, and he fainted.

*****

"Atsushi, get up."

Atsushi grumbled and tried to nestle deeper into the comfort of the bed. He was sore and tired, and he had no interest in getting up. He only wanted to sleep for a few more days.

"Atsushi, you have to get up." A hand took a hold of his shoulder and gave him a vigorous shake. "Our manager is going to your house right now to check on you, so we have to get you home. Now get up." Atsushi cracked his eyes open and looked up at the person - Hisashi - who had woken him. It took a moment for the guitarist's words to penetrate his sleep fogged brain, but when they did, he sat straight up in bed and threw the blankets back, only to remember that he was naked underneath them. He blushed, and Hisashi rolled his eyes.

"It's not anything that we haven't seen before, Achan." He then pulled Atsushi out of bed and to his feet before he threw a blanket around his shoulders to cover his nakedness. Atsushi wrapped it around himself as Hisashi took him by the shoulder and began to steer him from the room, but as soon as he tried to take a step, his muscles reminded him sharply that they had just undergone a very strenuous transformation. Atsushi bit his lip as his muscles and bones screamed in protest as he tried to walk, but he kept silent. Hisashi noticed that he was in pain though.

“Hide!” he called out “Come and help me!” The other guitarist must have been waiting down the hall, for he came through the door a scant few seconds later, carrying a bundle of clothing in his hands.

“He can wear these for now.” Hide said to Hisashi “He and I are almost the same size.” Hisashi nodded, and the two of them pulled took the blanket away and proceeded to dress him. Atsushi said nothing, a little embarrassed that they still had to take care of him, but acknowledging that he was so tired and sore that it would have taken him forever to dress himself. Once he was clothed, they each put arm around him and he put one arm around their shoulders, wincing as the tendons and muscles in his upper arms protested the movement quite vigorously.

The pair half walked, half carried him out of the room and down the stairs, where Ani and Yuta were waiting by the front door. Yuta took a moment to step into the living room and get a throw that Ani had draped over the back of the couch and bundled him up in it as best he could.

"Can't have you getting something else, Achan." he said evenly, and Atsushi managed a weak chuckle that was interrupted by a tired yawn.

"Let's get him home." Ani said, and he threw open the front door, which caused a rush of cold air to flow into the room. Atsushi broke out in shivers, and he thought that he really didn't want to go outside. He spent a brief moment thinking longingly of the warm bed that he had left upstairs before he was half carried out the door. Hisashi and Hide helped him down the walk and into Yuta's car, where he curled up in a ball in the backseat and wrapped himself in the throw. Hide and Hisashi sat down on either side of him, and he opted to use Hide's lap as a pillow as Yuta and Ani climbed in front. He felt Hide's hand gently smooth back his hair as Yuta started the engine.

"Rest, Achan." he said quietly "We'll wake you when you're home."

Atsushi dozed through the ride, vaguely aware of the sound of the engine, the feel of the road as the tires rolled over it, and Hide's hand stroking his hair. It wasn't until he heard the engine shut off and felt the vehicle stop that he registered anything else.

"Let's get him inside." He heard doors opening, and a scant few seconds later, he was rudely awakened the rest of the way when he was pulled out of his warm comfortable spot and pulled to his feet in the driveway. Hide and Hisashi's arms came around him again, and he was walked up the walk and through his front door.

"Take him to his room." he heard Ani say from somewhere nearby once they were all in the house and the door was shut behind them. Atsushi looked up the stairs in front of him, trying to ignore the stiffness in his neck, and snorted. There was no way he was going to be able to go up those steps, with or without assistance.

"Look out, Hisashi." Hide said, and Hisashi dropped his arm and stepped away. A split second later, Atsushi yelped in surprise when Hide simply picked him up and started up the stairs. Atsushi squeezed his eyes shut and put his arms around Hide's neck, terrified that the both of them were going to fall down the stairs, but Hide got him to the top safely and put him down. Hisashi quickly joined them, and they walked him to his bedroom.

Atsushi sat down on the edge of his bed with a sigh, while Ani rummaged around for his pajamas. He and Yuta helped him dress, and then he gratefully climbed under the blankets with a sigh. It was only then that he noticed something.

"How am I going to explain all the missing pictures and such to Sakura?" he asked no one in particular as he eyed the blank spaces on the walls where pictures used to hang and the empty expanse of Sakura's vanity table, which used to be covered with dozens of little bottles of perfume and creams. The room with silent as the other four in attendance looked around, wondering the same thing.

"Did the pictures themselves survive?" Hide asked.

"I think so." Yuta replied.

Hide looked at Atsushi. "Can you remember all the things that were on the vanity?"

Atsushi thought for a second. "I think so, most of them at least." A pad of paper and a pen were shoved into his hands.

"Here, write them all down, and I'll go out and replace them. I'll see if I can match the frames as close to the originals as possible, so hopefully Sakura won't be able to tell the difference." Atsushi nodded in understanding and began to write down everything on Sakura's vanity that he could remember, while the others tried to remember what frames had been holding what pictures and on what positions on the wall.

"Here," he said after a few minutes as he thrust the sizable list out at the guitarist, who took it and scanned it. Said guitarist then made a strangled croak and his eyes popped out when he saw just how many things were to be accounted for.

"I hope someone doesn't see you and let it slip to Hana that you've been out shopping." Hisashi remarked casually as he read the list over Hide's shoulder.

"Because I think you'll have one excited lady waiting for you when you get home." Ani added as he took a quick look.

"And she'll be mighty disappointed when you come home empty handed." Yuta finished.

Hide grumbled something under his breath before he stuffed the list in a pocket and headed out of the room. "I'll go get this stuff really quick. Be back later."

"I'll go with you." Yuta offered.

"As long as you don't make people think that I'm buying for you."

"Oh, you mean you aren't?" Yuta batted his eyelashes in an exaggerated fashion and pretended to wipe away a tear. "I'm crushed, Hidehiko! I thought you loved me!"

Hide groaned as he walked out into the hallway, and Yuta paused at the door long enough to send the others a cheeky grin before he followed.

"I'm going to scrounge for more picture frames." Hisashi announced as he walked out, and Atsushi looked over at Ani, who settled down in the same chair that Yuta had sat down in, in what seemed like a lifetime ago.

"Looks like it's just me and you." he said, and Ani smiled.

"Seems like it." he replied "Why don't you take a nap, Achan?"

"How are you going to explain your presence here to our manager?"

Ani shrugged. "I'll just tell him I came over to check on you and since you were asleep, I sat down to wait for you to wake up."

Atsushi nodded and snuggled down into the blankets with a yawn. "Love you, Ani."

He closed his eyes then, so he couldn't see the drummer, but he knew that the older man was smiling. "Love you too, Achan."

*****

"As you can see, he's fine. He's just a little under the weather."

It was the sounds of two voices in the room with him that roused him from his nap later. The first voice he knew right away was Ani's, the second belonged to their manager.

"I had to come and see him for myself, you understand. I was worried that maybe you four had shrunk him down to size and stuffed him in a closet or something."

Ani's laugh sounded a little nervous, but Atsushi didn't think their manager caught that. "Of course not. He's been sick, just like we've been saying all week."

"Ani?" Atsushi mumbled sleepily as he raised his head up form the pillow for a moment.

"And now that you've woke him up, I would like you to leave. You've seen for yourself that he's fine."

"Alright, but when will he be able to come into the studio?"

"He just got his voice back; give him some time to heal, will you?"

"Alright, alright."

Footsteps retreated from the room, and Atsushi heard them walking down the hallway and down the stairs. A few seconds later, he heard the door open and shut and sound of a car starting up and driving away. He wearily sat up and blinked the sand out of his eyes before he turned to the drummer, who was still sitting in the chair by the bed.

"Shrank me down to size and stuffed me in a closet, huh?"

Ani started to laugh. "He'll never know how close he came to the truth."

"Yeah, but stuff me in a closet?"

"We considered it."

"I love you all too. I have such wonderful friends and bandmates."

"Yes, you do. Now Sakura will be home shortly, and -"

"How do you know?"

"She called, how else? Now anyway, she said she'll be home in an hour or so, and we've replaced everything that was destroyed that day, so hopefully, she won't notice." The drummer stood up. "So I'm going to leave now, and let you sleep while you wait for your wife."

"Ani?"

The drummer paused halfway to the door. "Hmmm?"

"Stay with me until she's here? Please?"

Ani sighed and smiled. "Alright." And he went back to his chair and sat back down. No sooner had he done so then they heard the sound of a small car pulling up in the driveway.

"That's her." Atsushi said quietly as he sat up in bed.

"I guess this is where I leave you then."

"You sound like we were having some kind of torrid affair or something similar."

"Well I did strip you naked a time or two..."

"Don't even go there!"

Ani laughed again, and a second later, they both heard front door open and shut.

'Atsushi, I'm home!"

Ani leaned over the bed and gathered Atsushi into a hug. "I'll see you later. Get better soon."

"Thank you, Ani."

"Any time, Achan, just no more speaking to mysterious, disembodied voices in the middle of the night, okay?"

"Oh, I won't, trust me."

Ani smiled and smoothed his hair back one last time, before he stood up and walked out of the room. Atsushi could hear him speaking to Sakura in the hallway, but he couldn't make out their words. He also noticed that all the missing pictures were framed and back on the wall, and Sakura's vanity table was once again covered in dozens of little bottles. He shakily got out of bed and walked around the room, looking at everything, noting that every picture was in it's correct place.

"Atsushi?"

He turned around to see his wife standing the doorway looking at him. He smiled and opened his arms to her.

"Welcome home. I missed you." She smiled back at him and stepped into the embrace, winding her arms around his neck and pulling him in for a kiss.

Ah yes, he sighed inwardly as their lips met It's good to be me again.

finis
February 28, 2009
July 25, 2009

Chapter 6
Back to the Archive

A/N: Well it's been five months, seven chapters, 18,355 words and a whole lotta fun, but we are finally to the end of Lullaby. I hope you enjoyed reading as much as I enjoyed writing. XD

Lullaby Chapter 7

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