Title: Playing House

Author: Hawk Clowd

Disclaimer: Gravitation does not belong to me. Let's just leave it at that, all right? The midgets (you know, the kids), on the other hand, do.

Blood Type: vodka. It's good for you, really.

Warnings: very few.

Part: three

Author's Notes: I really don't mind kids that much, now that I think about it, I'm just not overly interested in having any of my own. You see, when I was little I told my mother that I wanted to by a mommy when I grew up, and, being the overly-concerned parent she was, she told me that I couldn't have any kids until I could take care of little things--like plants. So she bought me a flower... which I forgot to water. The flower died. When I found out and cried over it ("Now I can never have kids, Mommy! They'll die, too!"), she bought me a cactus. That was great and all, yes. You don't really have to do anything with a cactus. It just sits in the window and you water it whenever you remember that it's there. The problem? You can't hug a cactus. It hurts. I consequently grew up believing that children are prickly and covered with spikes. All in all, that doesn't provide a sound basis for me ever having kids. But I still have that cactus! I heart my cactus.

---

The following Friday was not easy to get through. The writer was as calm as he could possibly manage to be. The heat wave was still hitting Tokyo in full force, so Eiri had to think of new ways to distract the children while they were with him. He'd also realized, belatedly, that his refrigerator was stocked full with beer and nothing else, so he had to brave the grocery store--and the heat--in order to buy something that the children would be allowed to drink. Shuichi, on the other hand, was anxious. He had decided not to go to work that day, much to Eiri's annoyance, and was killing time by flipping through the television channels repeatedly. The kids were scheduled to arrive around seven o'clock, and while Eiri felt it was really no big deal, Shuichi was acting as though the next few days were going to determine his entire future.

By six-thirty that evening, Shuichi was nothing but nerves; he jumped at the slightest noise. Eiri watched the singer, vaguely amused, as Shuichi circled the apartment, trying to get his mind off of things.

"Will you calm down?" Eiri asked once Shuichi had started his ninety-second tour of the apartment. "It's really nothing to worry about."

"For you. You're their father--they have to like you. But what if they don't like me?" Shuichi asked.

"They don't have to like me at all," Eiri argued. "They just have to respect and revere me. That's what children are supposed to do. Anyway, they'll probably enjoy your company more than mine; you act more like a child than I do, certainly."

"I do not," Shuichi protested weakly. "Do you really think I act like a kid, Yuki?"

Eiri shrugged. "In this case, that's a good thing." He caught Shuichi's arm as the singer passed him again. "Stop. Walking. Around."

"I can't help it! I'm nervous!" He pulled out of Eiri's grasp and began pacing back and forth in front of the couch. Eiri watched dis-interestedly. "I mean, what if they hate me and they tell their moms that I'm a bad person and they start causing problems for us and you get fed up with that and get rid of me just so they'll leave you alone--I wouldn't put it past you, you know--and then you'll forget to eat and sleep and you'll turn into a skeleton man and I'll be living in a box on the street because I won't have the money to do anything else and then you'll waste away to nothing until you're just a pile of bones and stuff piled up in the chair in front of your computer and no one will know you're dead until this icky smell starts coming from the apartment, and even then they'll be afraid to call the police and tell them about it because they'll be wondering if you're really dead or not! And what if you weren't dead? You'd yell at them. You're not a very nice neighbor, you know. And then--"

Eiri interrupted the speech impatiently. "Will you stop that? You have nothing to worry about." He frowned. "I doubt any of the brats would care or even worry about you, and if you ever start to think you're doing something wrong, you can hide out in my bedroom. You'll be sleeping there all of this weekend anyway, so if you tell them you need a nap, I doubt they'll suspect you have any ulterior motives."

Shuichi made a face, but he was smiling. "I'm too old for naps."

Eiri opened his mouth to reply, but the buzzer went off, signaling that someone was outside the apartment complex and wanted to come up. Eiri got up and went to the door to press the intercom button on the wall.

"Who?"

There was a scurry from the other end. Eiri could only catch bits of the conversation--it sounded as though a woman and a young child were arguing about something having to do with speaking into the intercom. Wonderful. Eiri cleared his throat impatiently.

"Who is it?" he asked again.

"I'll tell him," the younger child insisted in the background. Then he yelled loudly into the intercom. "It's us!"

The woman hushed the child. "Ai and Hibiki Kuzuha, Eiri-san. I know that we're a little early, but may we come up?"

"If you want." Eiri hit the appropriate buttons and turned to face Shuichi, who was gnawing on the knuckle of his thumb. "You aren't going to be an idiot, right?" he asked.

The singer shook his head uncertainly. "I think I'll be okay. If you can do it, so can I."

"Good," Eiri replied, pulling the door open just as the Kuzuha pair appeared. It wasn't luck; he'd heard the elevator doors ding when they'd opened. "Shuichi, meet Ai and Hibiki Kuzuha."

Hibiki, who was a three year-old boy with classic Japanese features, put his thumb in his mouth and stared at Shuichi's hair--which had been dyed a light blue only a few days before via the orders of some ridiculous fashion-minded magazine photographer. Shuichi smiled nervously, but his smile faltered as Ai stepped forward. Eiri knew why the singer was struck with another bout of uncertainty; Ai was gorgeous, even after having given birth to Hibiki, and chances were that Shuichi was either intimidated by or attracted to the woman. Eiri had the disconcerting feeling that it was, in fact, the latter. He would have to do something about that later on.

Ai stood in front of Shuichi and looked him over critically. "He's cute," she told Eiri, a note of surprise in her voice.

Eiri frowned. "I like cute."

Ai stepped behind the singer and wrapped her arms around him. If Shuichi had been female, Ai would have been feeling him up. Shuichi was on the verge of panic and Eiri was prepared to step in when Ai released the younger man and stepped back.

"And he's very slight. Almost like a teenage girl, isn't he?" She smirked. "It's nice to see your tastes haven't changed that much."

Eiri shrugged. "I always checked for ID."

"Of course you did," Ai countered smoothly. "After you screwed around with them, of course, but so long as you can still make the claim..."

"I am still in the room, you know," Shuichi said defiantly. "And I am definitely not anything like a teenage girl."

Ai patted his head. "You'll have to forgive me--I was just curious." She turned back to Eiri, picking Hibiki up in her arms. "All of Hi-chan's things are in his backpack. I already gave him dinner and you are not allowed to give him beer like you did last time. He's just getting over a cold, so make sure he has a half-teaspoon of cough medicine before he goes to sleep. Bedtime is at eight o'clock and naptime is at two."

Eiri only half-listened, but he nodded when she was done. Right." There was no chance of him remembering (or even following) her instructions, so it was best to just agree with the crazy woman and then let it be.

She seemed satisfied with that, so she looked at her son. "Okay, sweetie. Mommy is going to leave now. Are you going to be a good boy for Daddy?"

Hibiki nodded. Shuichi, Eiri noticed, winced.

"Good boy." Ai pushed Hibiki to Eiri, who took him grudgingly, and the boy circled his arms around Eiri's neck, almost choking the writer. Then, after planting a kiss on Hibiki's forehead and mussing Eiri's hair, Ai left. Eiri kicked the door closed behind her and sat on the couch. Hibiki didn't seem to want to move, so Eiri let the boy stay there for the time being. Shuichi stood awkwardly a few meters away, shifting uncomfortably.

A few minutes passed before Eiri shot Hibiki a look. "You're being quiet now, but last year you never shut your mouth. What's wrong?"

Hibiki moved to whisper into the writer's ear. Eiri winced and stayed silent, although he noted that Shuichi had noticed the gesture and was trying to hold back his laughter, with surprising success. Eiri's ears were extremely ticklish.

"That man has blue hair," the boy whispered loudly but confidently. "I once had a dream about a blue-haired man and Mommy told me that people can't have blue hair unless there's something wrong with them. Is there something wrong with your friend?"

Eiri looked at Shuichi briefly. The singer was listening intently and he flushed when he caught Eiri's eye. Eiri shook his head.

"He's a magician," Eiri told Hibiki seriously. "He's a very bad one, though, and he knows really lousy tricks. Pretty much all he can do is change the color of his hair, and he uses a special potion to do that."

Hibiki's eyes were wide. "You live with a magician?"

Eiri frowned. Kids these days just didn't listen. "If you can call that a magician, yes."

"What's his name?"

"Shuichi." The intercom buzzed again, so Eiri stood up and set Hibiki down. "Go play with him. Maybe he'll make your hair change color, too."

"'Kay." Hibiki obediently went to talk to Shuichi, who had finally concluded that maybe, just maybe, he did not have to worry about these kids after all.

Before Eiri could even reach the intercom, there was a knock on the door. Someone must have let them in already, he decided, so he opened the door and was immediately shoved to the side by Mawako Nanimen, who had already started drooling over Shuichi--blue hair and all. Namiko, her two-year-old daughter, stepped inside shyly. Her fingers were in her mouth and there was a small suitcase in the hall behind her.

Eiri considered the girl briefly. "You're Namiko," he stated.

She nodded, her brunette pigtails bobbing. "You're my father." She looked past him to where her mother and Hibiki were fighting for Shuichi's attention. "'n that's Thindou-thama, right?"

Eiri hesitated. "That's Shindou Shuichi, yes." Did the girl have a lisp or was he hearing things? He hoped he was hearing things--that would go away soon enough, but children with lisps had always annoyed him. He knew that wasn't fair, but he just couldn't help it.

"My mom thays that Thindou-thama is thexy. Ith thee right?"

It took Eiri almost full minute to decipher that. "You'd have to ask your mother."

"Are you thexy?"

Eiri fought the urge to rip her fingers out of her mouth and sign her up for a speech class. They did offer classes for that sort of thing, didn't they? "Yes. Go talk to your mother."

"What doth thexy mean?"

He took a deep breath, trying to calm himself down. It didn't work. "Ask your mother."

"Are you really my daddy?" she asked, letting her hand drop to her side.

"That's what both your mother and the paternity tests she took told me, and apparently it is very hard to fool a paternity test," Eiri answered, praying she had no more questions for him. What had ever happened to the old 'silence is golden' rule? He'd rather disliked that rule, growing up, but now he understood why his father had mandated it. The child was quiet for a moment; maybe she had no more questions in mind?

"Why ith your hair thuch a funny color?"

Damn.

"Because I'm sexy and sexy people are allowed to have any hair color they want. Didn't you mother ever tell you that?"

"No." Namiko put her fingers back into her mouth and babbled something around them. Eiri frowned, but he just nodded his head as though he had understood and then pushed her gently in the direction of Shuichi, Hibiki, and Mawako. He was already getting a headache, and Miho, his eldest daughter, hadn't even arrived yet.

It was going to be a long weekend.

---to be continued---