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: six

Author's Notes: I have written one other story featuring young children (well, one young child) and I've noticed that, between that one and this story, there are a lot of similarities between the two. Both featured a five year old. And a child who liked toy cars. And mysterious disappearing children... Although a glossed-over game of hide-and-seek is hardly as dramatic as what happened in that other story. Yeah. That's a tale for another... fandom. Yes. Anyway, I believe this is the longest chapter so far in this story, and that's actually all I wanted to say here. Eeeyup. So... See you in the next chapter!

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Eiri and Shuichi woke the next morning to two little kids jumping on their bed--Hibiki and Namiko. Shuichi, who was really not much of a morning person, buried his head beneath his pillow and curled up. Eiri looked at the kids blearily.

"Daddy Eiri-than! Hibiki thays you made funny breakfast food for him latht time he wath here! Make it again!" Namiko ordered.

Eiri spared a glance at the clock by his bed. "It's only six-thirty," he complained. "Go watch cartoons or something."

"Noooo! Daddy, make the funny breakfast!" Hibiki howled.

Shuichi muttered something that may have been either a long string of profanities or a prayer to some sort of heathen deity. "Yuki, will you just go make them breakfast already before someone dies?"

Eiri shot the singer a scathing look even though Shuichi's head was still underneath the pillow. He liked mornings about as much as Shuichi did, but if the younger man actually expected him to get out of bed and cook just to get rid of the brats, he had another--

"Daddy!!!" the two children wailed in unison, pulling on the writer's arm.

Eiri resigned himself to one--just one--morning without sleep and slinked out of bed. Hibiki and Namiko cheered and followed him out. As Eiri shut the bedroom door behind the three of them, he heard Shuichi snore.

Jerk.

"Where's Miho?" Eiri asked, stifling a yawn.

"She's still in your other room," Hibiki replied dutifully.

Namiko nodded. "The one with the 'puter."

A sense of dread and foreboding suddenly seized Eiri's heart. His computer? And Miho... That, he felt, was indeed a deadly combination. He fought the urge to check in on his laptop and lost. Instead of going to the kitchen, he went straight to his study and tried the handle.

Locked. Damn it. Well, Eiri though, maybe she could be trusted to stay in the same room as his laptop. He hardly dared to hope--he only barely trusted Shuichi in that room by himself, after all.

Hibiki started pulling on Eiri's arm again. "Daddy!"

"Right, I know. Funny breakfast." Eiri sighed and went to the kitchen, Hibiki and Namiko close on his heels. He rooted around in the refrigerator. Why had he made last year? Something he'd learned to make in America... Waffles? Yeah, that sounded about right. Shuichi had since broken his waffle iron, however, so that was out of the question... What did he have that would make up a non-traditional Japanese breakfast?

Meh. Eiri took out everything in his fridge and set it all on the counter, then went to cooking. It didn't take too long and, when it was ready, Eiri sent Hibiki and Namiko to wake Shuichi up. Revenge was a very, very sweet thing.

Shuichi wandered in soon after, yawning and trying to tie his robe shut while the two midgets were hanging off of his arms. When he saw the breakfast, he balked just slightly. Eiri knew why; Shuichi thought a that a meal that included anything aside from rice and maybe some cereal was nauseating any time before eleven. Eiri gave the singer some credit for not turning back around and going back to bed.

"Someone has to wake up Miho," Shuichi said after taking a minute to recover from the thought of eating a 'funny' breakfast.

"OH!" Namiko cried, raising her hand and jumping from foot to foot. "I'll do it!"

Sic-ing Namiko on his eldest daughter was a very tempting idea, but Eiri decided not to do it. "I'll take care of it," he said. "Set the table, will you?"

Shuichi nodded and so Eiri left the kitchen, backtracking toward the study. The door was still locked, so Eiri knocked.

"Miho," he said after a moment of waiting. "Breakfast is on the table. If you want to eat, it's time to get up."

No answer. Eiri knocked again.

"Miho," he repeated, this time a bit louder.

The door swung open and Miho stood in the doorway, gazing straight ahead--at Eiri's knees, it seemed. He stepped aside.

"Good morning, Miho," he said stiffly.

The little blonde girl did not respond, opting instead to move past him toward the kitchen. Her doll was clutched tightly in her arms, a fact that did not go unnoticed by Eiri. That doll... It was a slight thing and rather fancy, but not the sort of doll he would have expected a little girl to have. It was made of porcelain and the features were carefully painted on the face. It was dressed in what looked to be a green kimono patterned with sakura blossoms. The hair, black and straight, had been done up into a tiny pair of twin buns, obviously done by Miho herself. That, strangely, was the only evidence that the doll belonged to a little girl. Eiri tried to think of where he'd seen a similar doll before and could not. Despite this, the doll seemed strange in this little girl's arms.

Miho sat as far away from Shuichi as possible. This, too, did not go unnoticed. Eiri thought it wise not to push the issue.

Hibiki practically dove into his plate of food. Miho picked at hers. Namiko was eyeing it warily and looking from her plate to Shuichi over and over again, as if waiting to see if the food was poisoned or not. She wasn't used to "funny" breakfasts, Eiri decided. Also, he realized belatedly, she was probably unaccustomed to eating with any utensils aside from chopsticks--which Shuichi had not set out. Eiri only owned three pairs as it was.

Eiri kicked Shuichi under the table. "Eat," he hissed.

Shuichi made a face and then sighed, picking up his fork and forcing himself to eat a few bites. Namiko followed suit, following Shuichi's example--facial expression and all.

Breakfast was uneventful. Namiko and Hibiki, already fast friends, were more than willing to watch cartoons for the rest of the morning. Miho sat on the couch, pretending she wasn't interested in the television but actually watching overtop her book. Shuichi cleaned the kitchen and then went ahead and enjoyed the cartoons with the rest of them. Eiri, after checking to make sure his study was mostly safe (it was), pretended to read a book of his own while actually watching everyone else watch cartoons. He was much better at faking it than Miho. That activity got boring after a while, though, so he went to his study to write.

A little after ten o'clock, the phone rang. Shuichi picked it up, had a brief argument with whoever was on the other end of the line, and then sidled up to Eiri.

"Yuki...?" he ventured. "Um..."

Eiri set down his book and took off his glasses, looking up at Shuichi. "Yes?"

"K-san wants me to come in to the studio today for some reason. He said there was a track we had to fix and that someone wanted to interview Bad Luck and..." Shuichi faltered. "Will you be all right if I go to work?"

"Sure," Eiri replied with a shrug. He had managed to live through Father's Day weekends in the past, before Shuichi had come along, and he could manage now, for at least a few hours, if need be. Shuichi didn't seem to be so confident, but he smiled and went with it.

"Okay," he murmured. "I'm going to get dressed then." With that, he mussed Eiri's hair and went off to the bedroom.

As soon as Shuichi was out of the study, Hibiki and Namiko practically pounced on Eiri, begging the writer to play with them. It didn't take long for Eiri to grow irritated with them, and soon his mind raced for possible ways to keep them from bothering him while he could still act like 'the good father'. After a moment of thought, he found one.

"Do you want to play hide-and-seek?" Eiri asked. "That's when you guys hide and I count to some big number and then come looking for you. Okay?"

The two midgets squealed in delight.

"All right. You guys hide and I'll count to a thousand or something and start looking for you," he promised. "One... two..."

Hibiki and Namiko were off like twin shots, running around the apartment looking for hiding places. After a moment, Eiri shut the study door. Well. That had certainly been easy.

Eiri typed quickly for about twenty minutes or so before he heard the front door click shut. Shuichi had left, Eiri assumed. He thought nothing of it... at least, not until Shuichi called out a loud goodbye and actually did leave a few minutes later.

Eiri's fingers froze on the keyboard. No. It had to be some kind of joke; no child in their right mind would leave the apartment during a game of hide-and-seek, especially not in a strange apartment complex, right? Eiri grimaced. Nah, these were his kids, and that meant they were messed up enough to do just about anything.

Well, there would most certainly be a bit of looking to be done. Eiri saved his document (if nothing else, he could turn a few new chapters in to Mizuki before he was murdered by one of his old bed-mates), got up, and began to search the apartment.

Miho was situated on the couch, doll in her arms and a book in her hands. Her cheeks were flushed, but Eiri thought nothing of it. Okay. One midget accounted for.

Hibiki was relatively easy to find--the boy was hiding behind a potted plant Eiri had not remembered owning. Hibiki, displeased at being found, practically told Eiri where to find Namiko--under the covers of Eiri and Shuichi's bed. She was actually napping when he found her and Eiri almost didn't want to wake her up. He did, though, and, confident that the door thing had been a fluke, he led the midgets into the kitchen, where he put some tea on. He needed it for his nerves and he hoped it would calm the children down. Wishful thinking.

Shortly before the tea was ready, Miho wandered in. When it actually was ready, she set down her doll and poured out the tea herself. Eiri briefly admired her technique--although she (thankfully) did not perform a full tea ceremony, her mannerisms and actions made it obvious that she was either learning the process or had already mastered it. It was impressive in it's own way, especially in a girl so small--although Eiri really wasn't sure he was one to judge, as he'd never bothered to learn all the intricacies of the ceremony himself.

Hibiki and Namiko both gulped their tea down and then complained that their tongues were burnt. Eiri expertly ignored them. Miho just sat back, sipped her tea, and ignored the lot of them.

As Eiri nursed his own tea and tried to keep calm, he watched his eldest daughter carefully. She was strange, he thought. Quiet, but not very shy. Withdrawn, but bold. An enigma all in herself. But wasn't she too young to be an enigma? Eiri half wanted to believe that. Then what? She never did--

"Daddy Eiri-than?" Namiko questioned. She had left the table and moved to tug on Eiri's sleeve, the fingers of her free hand in her mouth.

Eiri sighed. "Yes?"

"Will you do my hair fo' me?" she asked. "Thindou-thama promithed to do it, but he had to leave and I don't know how to--"

"I'm not very good with hair," Eiri interrupted. Then, as the girl's face began to fall, he had a thought. "Why not ask Miho to do it? She's very good at doing hair."

If Namiko was surprised by that statement, Miho was shocked. The five-year-old nearly choked on her tea. She stared at Eiri in mute wonder. It was a much better look for her than the usual open resentment and dislike, Eiri thought.

Namiko, after she managed to grow on the idea, turned to Miho. "Will you do my hair for me?"

Miho hesitated, glancing from Namiko to Eiri and back again. She seemed unsure of what the proper course of action would be. "Um... Yes. All right."

Namiko clapped delightedly. "Okay! I'll get my things!"

Miho shot Eiri one last baffled look and then went to join Namiko in the living room. As the writer watched his two daughters leave, he wondered if offering up Miho had been a good idea or a bad one. Ah, well; he'd find out eventually.

Hibiki made a little 'grr' noise, which surprised Eiri. The writer turned back around to look at the boy with a cautious look. Was his son a spirit or a werewolf or something? Well, if he was, he certainly didn't get that from Eiri's side of the family. Crazy boy.

"They're doing girl stuff," Hibiki said finally, voice tinted with obvious distaste. "We should do guy stuff."

Eiri bit back the tiniest of smiles. Guy stuff? The only 'guy stuff' that he could think of involved Tatsuha, beer, and lots of dirty stories. Now, while drinking beer and swapping stories was normally entertaining, Eiri did not really think it would be quite as much fun with three-year-old Hibiki. Ai, the boy's mother, would probably murder Eiri for it if she found out about it.

"Like what?" Eiri asked, amused and half-willing to humor the brat.

"Um..." Hibiki took a long moment to think on it. "We could play with trucks," he offered. "I have some."

Eiri decided not to point out that some girls--Mika, for instance--played with toy cars and trucks. He also tried not to balk at the idea. Play with trucks? Damn. Stupid Shuichi and his 'you're a bad father' talk... Whatever. Trucks. He could do that. He shrugged his agreement and with Hibiki into the living room.

Hibiki practically dumped his backpack onto the floor. Toy trucks and cars of various shapes, sizes, and colors spilled out and Eiri looked at them mournfully, longing for the days when his father used to waste children's playtime by lecturing about how, in his day, he played with sticks and didn't have all those fancy plastic toys.

"Okay," Hibiki said at last. "I'll be this truck," he pulled a big yellow car out of the chaotic mess, "and you can be the rest of 'em. My truck is a super truck, so you can do all sorts of things and my truck will save the day with its super awesome powers!"

Whoa, hold on. That didn't sound fair. Besides, trucks couldn't have super powers, nor, to Eiri's knowledge, did trucks ever save the day. Ran things over, yes, and have their engines die at the worst possible times, of course. But save fellow automobiles from fates worse than death? Why no, they did not do that.

Eiri sighed and set logic aside, for the time being, and the game began.

---to be continued---