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: eight
Author's Notes: many of the following scenes were written back in October, so this chapter was just a matter of connecting the dots, which was harder than I'd expected.
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Shuichi arrived home several hours later, just in time to remind Eiri that children, unlike adults, could not put themselves to bed. So while Eiri tried to figure out how to put Hibiki and Namiko to bed without killing them, Shuichi took a shower and then returned to tell the children stories. He somehow convinced Eiri to sit down and make one up for them as well, although Shuichi had to revise the ending - which Eiri had made dark and somewhat gloomy from force of habit alone - so that Hibiki and Namiko, at least, would not have nightmares. Miho, once again, seemed to prefer the solitude and quiet of the book she pretended to read to the stories Shuichi and Eiri attempted to make up.
Before he and Shuichi left for the sanctuary of their bedroom, Eiri even remembered to give Hibiki the medicine left by his mother. And since Namiko joined with a coughing fit, he gave her some as well. He did not see anything wrong with that, as the bottle had no warning against giving the medicine to anyone other than the person for whom it was intended and it at least kept Namiko from coughing. Miho decided to sleep in Eiri's office once again and Shuichi forbade Eiri to argue, claiming that it would do the writer no good anyway.
When they did finally reach the bedroom, Shuichi lingered by the door and, after a moment of thought, locked it. He pounced Eiri from behind, pushing the writer backward onto the bed. Eiri made a slight grunting noise, twisted to grab Shuichi's arms, and positioned them so that the singer's elbows weren't digging into his hips.
"Hello there" Shuichi said with a quiet giggle.
Eiri grunted a brusque reply.
Shuichi grinned. "You're sexy when you're playing house, did you know that" he asked in a teasing voice.
"I'm always sexy" Eiri replied.
Shuichi stifled a laugh and then pressed his lips against Eiri's neck in a chaste kiss. "Did you guys have a lot of fun today"
"No" Eiri grumped. Shuichi shot him a look and Eiri quickly corrected his statement. "It was all right" he said quietly. "I'm not used to that sot of thing; it made me tired."
"Too tired for me" Shuichi asked teasingly as his fingers crept down Eiri's sides, toward the top of the writer's pants. The touches tickled and Eiri squirmed just slightly.
"Yes" Eiri said stubbornly. He lifted Shuichi's hands away, pushed the singer off, and rolled onto his stomach, pretending to be settling down into sleep.
Shuichi, of course, protested. "Yuki" he exclaimed.
Eiri rolled over again and slapped a hand over Shuichi's mouth. "Quiet" he hissed.
"Mmmph" Shuichi mumbled under Eiri's hand. Eiri removed his hand and Shuichi repeated himself. "Sorry" he stage-whispered.
"Just keep quiet" Eiri scolded.
"Okay, okay..." Shuichi said, rolling his eyes.
Eiri sat up slightly, using his elbow to prop up his upper body, and flicked the end of Shuichi's arm with the tip of his finger. "Don't give me that" he scolded.
"Give you what" Shuichi challenged with a faux-innocent smile. He eeped when Eiri pulled him away and then pushed him down flat on the bed.
"Shush" Eiri chastised gently as he began to ease Shuichi out of his shirt. "Were all of those lessons on how to keep quiet a waste of time"
Shuichi shook his head quickly, clamping his mouth shut and sucking in a breath through his teeth as Eiri tweaked an overly sensitive patch of skin on the younger man's hip. He pet Eiri's hair as the writer slowly moved up the singer's body. Eiri's hands wandered. He kept his balance with the lower part of his right arm, twisting and weaving strands of Shuichi's hair around his fingers as he leaned over the singer; his left hand traced the line of Shuichi's body and then slipped in the front of the loose pants the singer wore. Shuichi gasped at the touches and Eiri stifled the sound by pressing his lips to Shuichi's.
Hardly a moment later, Shuichi jerked away. "Did you hear that" he asked in a whisper.
"I didn't hear anything" Eiri muttered, but, when he listened, he did. From out in the hallway came the tiny sound of footsteps.
The floor creaked and Shuichi grabbed onto Eiri's arm, his fingers squeezing tightly. "I heard it again" he whispered anxiously.
Eiri sighed and gently eased his arms out of Shuichi's grasp, rubbing at the marks Shuichi's handholds had made against his skin. "Calm down" he scolded. "One of the brats probably just got up for a drink."
"I don't know..." Shuichi began. His voice trailed off as the footsteps got quieter. They both strained to listen and, after a moment, heard the front door close. Eiri and Shuichi were both still for a moment, then they got out of bed and went for the door. Eiri got there first and he unlocked it hastily. Shuichi shifted from foot to foot anxiously as he waited for the door to open, then rushed out into the hall ahead of Eiri. The blond, of course, was not far behind.
A quick search of the apartment verified that nothing important was missing or disrupted, the front door was unlocked, and Hibiki and Namiko were sleeping peacefully on the living room floor.
Miho, however, was nowhere to be found. Her sleeping bag lay discarded on the floor in front of Eiri's desk and her shoes were not at the front door where she had left them.
Shuichi immediately flew into a panic. Eiri contained himself slightly better, rationalizing that the girl had simply gone out into the hall for something and would be back shortly, but he felt a knot of... something building and twisting in his gut.
"We have to find her" Shuichi cried in a loud whisper. He was wringing his hands and looking about anxiously, as though Miho would show up simply because he wished her to. Eiri could not figure out why the singer was worrying about her so much; it was not as though she was his daughter.
Eiri frowned and tried to hush the younger man. "Quiet down" he hissed. When Shuichi ignored him, he raised his voice. "Shut up"
It took several moments, but Shuichi did stop panicking visibly, although Eiri could tell simply by the way the singer's eyes darted about that the younger man was on the verge of exploding. As if to add to Eiri's frustration, the telltale sounds of shifting reached his ears from the two sleeping bags laid out on the floor nearby.
"Daddy Eiri-than" a little voice inquired blearily into the dark.
Eiri fought the urge to curse. "Go back to sleep, Namiko" he said.
"I can't" Namiko protested, sitting up in her sleeping bag and rubbing at her eyes.
Hibiki, of course, then felt the need to join in. "What's going on" he asked sleepily. He rolled over onto his back and then sat up as well, blinking lazily around the room. "S'it morning already"
"No. Go back to sleep."
Shuichi was getting anxious again, Eiri could tell. "Yuki" the singer began in a whisper"what are we going to do"
The two children heard the fretful whisper and looked at each other. They murmured at one another for a moment and Eiri's heart sank. Oh no. When children spoke among themselves, the outcome was rarely good. He prepared himself for the blow.
Namiko, it seemed, had been deigned the spokesperson. "Did you looth Miho-chan" she asked in her lisping drawl. Hibiki's thumb searched for this mouth and Eiri glared at them both in the semi-darkness.
"No" he replied, trying desperately not to lose his temper. "Go back to bed."
Shuichi started to tug on his arm. "Yuki" he said, again and again. "Yuki"
"Shut up" Eiri snapped, jerking his arm out of Shuichi's grasp. Shuichi jumped in alarm, staring at Eiri with a hurt look on his face, and the two children made a noise of exclamation. Namiko started to cry and Hibiki looked to be on the verge of tears himself. Silently, Eiri wished he had a gun pressed to his temple. At that moment, he would have gladly pulled the trigger.
The scene went on like that for a few moments before Eiri gave up and rubbed his forehead. He needed more painkillers and he needed them badly. "I'm sorry" he apologized gruffly. It seemed to be the best thing to do, seeing as how nothing else was helping the situation.
Biting his lower lip, Shuichi nodded and Eiri knew that the singer understood.
Hibiki and Namiko, however, continued to wail in the center of the living room, so the relief that the two lovers felt was short-lived. Remembering the task at hand, Shuichi started to panic all over again, grabbed Eiri's arm, and pulled the writer into the hallway that led to their bedroom. It was, thankfully, far enough away that the remaining two children would not be able to hear them over their tears.
"Yuki" Shuichi hissed, tightening his grip. "What are we going to do"
"I'll tell you" Eiri said, not bothering to pry the singer off him. The brat would only latch back on anyway, he knew, and he had already lashed out at him once already. It was somewhat nice, besides. "There's a bottle of window cleaner in the kitchen, somewhere. You make them something to eat and I'll slip the cleaner in there. Between your cooking and the poison, they'll stop being a problem."
"What" Shuichi cried. "Yuki! We can't do that"
"You're right" Eiri admitted grudgingly. "Not even they could possibly be dumb enough to eat your cooking."
"Yuki"
Eiri sighed. "Never mind" he said quietly. "You go put Hibiki and Namiko back to bed. In the living room, in our room... I don't care."
"But..."
"Be an adult for once and do it" Eiri interrupted shortly. "I'll go out and look for Miho; she can't be that far away and she's more likely to listen to me than you."
Shuichi looked as though he wanted to argue, but he said nothing. Instead, he set his jaw and, after he took a moment to gather his composure, let go of Eiri's arm, turned, and went back to the living room to deal with Hibiki and Namiko. Once the noise died down a little bit, Shuichi returned, holding a still crying Namiko in one arm and leading a sniffling Hibiki by the hand. He paused by Eiri as they passed and gave the writer a quick kiss. That done, he brought the two children into the bedroom. When the door shut, Eiri moved to the door, grabbed his shoes and keys, and began the search for his eldest daughter.
He had intended to drive and look for her that way first, but a sudden thought made him change his mind. As a child, Eiri himself had attempted to run away from home on several occasions, mostly for silly reasons. When he was just toying with the idea, he often would get to the end of the road and then turn back when no one came out to stop him. On the few occasions when he had been serious, however, he had never been able to decide where to go and had usually ended up crying alone somewhere near to the house, where he was sure no one would look for him. Oftentimes no one had even noticed he was gone. Later in life, Eiri had used that same tactic - simply going somewhere where he would not be noticed - whenever he was troubled by something or when he simply wanted to think. Eiri knew that he had not had the most typical of childhoods, no matter how he looked at it, but maybe, just maybe...
Eiri looked in the hallway first, then checked the elevator. When neither of those forfeited any results, he went down the stairs, all the way to the parking garage. Then, instead of going into the garage, he turned toward the front door of the building. Outside, he circled the property, squinting in the semi-dark. He realized he should have brought a flashlight and silently chastised himself for neglecting to think of that sooner.
Miho was sitting on the stairs just outside the walk-in entrance to the parking garage when Eiri finally found her. She was holding her doll close to her and stroking its hair with one hand. She looked...
Eiri cleared his throat as he approached in order to let her know that he was there. Miho flinched, but she did not try to move away. Eiri stepped forward and took a seat on the step next to her. The two sat there, side by side, in silence.
After a long while, Eiri sighed. "Leaving the apartment by yourself is dangerous" he murmured. "The neighborhood here is a good one, but it's still not safe enough for a little girl to wander around all by herself, even if she doesn't go very far."
Miho pulled her doll closer and Eiri saw her head droop a little, almost as though she was trying to hide her face. The girl's grip on her doll tightened.
Eiri didn't know what to do. Children had never made any sense to him, much less children like Miho. They were far too complicated. Had it been Tatsuha, five years old and sitting alone, Eiri - who would have been about eleven, then - would probably have gone to fetch Mika. (Now, of course, if Tatsuha had been sitting alone at his current age, Eiri probably would have offered him a cigarette and taken him to a bar.)
Had Shuichi been the one sitting there, Eiri would have insulted him, probably, or he would have sat there until the singer apologized for something he had not done. That, he decided quickly, would not work with Miho. Afterward, Shuichi also would have required some sort of physical contact - a hug, a quick touch on the shoulder, a head pet... However, Eiri was rather uncomfortable with the idea of establishing such a connection with his estranged daughter.
So what if it had been him? Eiri took a moment to imagine himself, sad and alone, on the steps and found it a far too familiar feeling. What would he want? Well, he would not have wanted anyone to see him, for one, but there was no helping that now. After being caught, though, then he probably would have wanted the person in question to talk - just talk - about something neither of them really cared about until he or she could gauge enough from his reactions to figure out what was wrong. He would have wanted someone to at least try to understand.
Fucking hell. He would have to be the difficult one.
"The pool was nice today" he tried tentatively. Ugh. Weak. "It smelled a great deal of chlorine, but I suppose even that is better then the alternative."
Nothing.
"Namiko was beginning to get the hang of swimming" he went on, feeling more awkward by the second. "Maybe next year she'll be able to swim with you and Hibiki. She'd like that, and she'd be safe doing it, even if she wasn't as good a swimmer. You would make sure she didn't get in over her head, I think."
The light from a nearby street lamp was dim, but Eiri could nonetheless see Miho's eyes mist over, just a touch.
Eiri gave up trying to be tactful. What was the point"It's all right if you don't like me" he said decisively. "I'm a pretty shitty father, after all. I'm not as sure I'm all right with you hating Shindou-san, however. He never once did anything to make you..." Eiri's voice trailed off as he noticed Miho was crying. He cursed silently. Now what?
He winced and then, grudgingly, reached to touch her shoulder. "Miho..."
"Stop it" she yelled, jumping to her feet and away from him. Tears ran down her cheeks and her grip on her doll was so tight that her knuckles were white. "I hate this! I hate it here and I hate you and I want to go home"
Eiri didn't move or say a word.
"It's all your fault" she cried as she broke down completely. She sobbed into her hands and wavered on her feet. After a moment's hesitation, Eiri reached out and eased her back down into a sitting position on the step. She continued to speak, the whole time, through the sobs that made her entire body shake. It was hard to understand her, but Eiri tried. And slowly, very slowly, the story came out.
Miho had started school that year and the kids there teased her because her skin was light and her hair was blonde. She told Eiri how her parents favored her half-sister and brothers and how her mother's husband often came home drunk and, when her mother did not lock him out, how they would argue and how Eiri's name was always mentioned. She went so far as to guess just how much her mother resented the writer for having spoiled her marriage. Miho told Eiri that her mother had taught her about homosexuality (which Miho called man-love), how it was a terrible, fearful thing, and how, since Eiri and Shuichi were in a homosexual relationship, Miho was convinced that Eiri didn't like any girls - including his own daughters. Even his poor attempts at playing with Namiko had confused her and then made her jealous, it seemed. Every sentence was punctuated with a sob and the phrase 'it's all your fault'.
Once she finished ranting and telling Eiri her reasons for everything, she simply repeated the words 'I hate you' over and over again, sobbing all the while. It all made Eiri feel rather numb inside. He wasn't sure how to feel about this.
When Miho's sobs became more forced and stuttered, Eiri still did not know what to do. He crossed his arms, almost hugging them to himself, and tried to ignore the empty, hollow feeling of uselessness that came with watching someone cry and knowing there was nothing in his power he could do to help. He was quiet for a long while as he listened to her forced, tearless sobs.
He sighed. "I'm sorry."
The words seemed to surprise the girl; in truth, they surprised him. She glanced up at him and wiped her eyes with the back of one hand. "Wh... what"
"I'm sorry" Eiri said again as he settled back and tilted his head up so that he was staring at the underside of the door ledge. "I'm sorry that the children at your school don't understand you and that they make fun of you. I'm also sorry that your stepfather resents you for something over which you've never had any control. And you're right to hate me, I suppose - I'm not, for the most part, a nice person. I never wanted to have children. You and the other two were just..." Eiri shook his head and did not bother to complete that thought. "My fathering you has given you nothing but bad things, and I apologize."
Miho nodded her head. She was silent.
"I'm a terrible father" Eiri went on. "I spend three days a year with my children and, even then, I spend more time ignoring them then anything else. I know how old you all are, but I don't know when you celebrate your birthdays or anything else. I know nothing about you three and I have never tried to find out." Eiri folded his hands, sitting up straight once again. "And so I'm sorry."
Miho was silent for some time. "My birthday is on March sixteenth" she finally told him in a quiet voice.
Eiri looked at her with a vague sense of surprise. He had almost known that. He had known that one of his children was born in March, at least.
Miho started to pet the doll's hair again. "My mom bought me this doll with money you sent her" she murmured. "And she told me that that's how I was s'posed to look - how I'd have looked if you weren't my father." Miho paused. "She has beautiful hair."
Eiri hesitated and then dared to reach over and take a bit of Miho's hair between his fingers. "I like yours better" he told her softly.
"All the kids at school tease me because my mom and stepfather and my sister and my brothers are all Japanese and I'm not." She wiped her nose with the back of her hand. "They call me mixed."
Eiri frowned. That, at least, was a familiar problem. "You're Japanese, not mixed" he argued. "Both of my parents were Japanese and so, I assume, were your mother's." He took his hand away. "I don't know why your hair - or my own - is this color. It runs through my family and shows up every so often." He decided not to tell the girl that many of his blond ancestors had been killed, according the stories his father had once told him as a little boy. "That only makes it harder to explain, I suppose."
"That's the problem" she exclaimed. "No one wants to be my friend and everyone teases me and makes fun and... And I'm sick of it! I wish you weren't my father! It's all your fault! People hate me because of you"
"They're scared of you" Eiri corrected"because you're different."
"How would you know"
He didn't, really. That was what he'd been told countless times as a child and had been told to believe, even on the days when he came home with a black eye or a split lip. Eiri did not admit that, however. He quirked an eyebrow. "I was little once too, you know."
"Oh." Miho said. She stared down at her doll again. "So how'd you get them to stop"
Eiri hesitated. For some reason, he really didn't think the truthful response - 'I ran away to America' - would be a satisfactory answer. "They didn't stop" he told the girl honestly. "They teased me until I left the school and I had no way to stop them. I used to get into fights over it all." He leaned back slightly, staring up at the sky. "They tease because they understand it. It's all right for a foreigner to look foreign, but not for a native Japanese person to look this way. That's how they think."
Miho was quiet.
Thinking it over, Eiri paused. "People still treat me differently" he admitted. "Partially because of the way I look."
Miho sniffed. "I don't want to be different."
"You can't change what you are - or what other people think" Eiri told her, echoing words his sister had once said to him. "You can only accept it."
"But..."
"It's hard" Eiri interrupted. "I know that."
Miho sighed. "I wish I looked like my doll."
Eiri frowned and reached over, taking the doll from Miho's hands and turning it over, examining it. He shrugged and handed it back. "I don't like it very much. Her kimono is nice, but she herself leaves something to be desired."
A puzzled look passed over Miho's face, but she said nothing. She shifted awkwardly. "I don't want to stay here."
"That's fine" Eiri said after a moment. "If you would like, I'll call your mother and she can come pick you up. I'm not going to make you stay here if you don't want to."
"You don't want me to stay."
"That's not what I said" Eiri argued.
"But it's what you meant" Miho said dejectedly.
Eiri frowned and put a hand on Miho's head, turning her gently to look at him. "That's not what I said" he repeated. "Look. I'm not going to force you into anything. If you want to stay, that's fine. If you want to go, that's fine, too."
"You don't care"
Ack. That wasn't it at all. Jeez. He was a writer, for fuck's sake. Why couldn't he put his answer into the right words? It wasn't at all fair.
"That's not it either" Eiri said. "I don't know how to say what I mean, Miho; I'm not very good at that sort of thing. I realize I'm an awful father, but... Well, if it makes a difference at all, I'm trying." Shuichi was making him try harder to be a decent father, really, but she didn't need to know that.
She gave him a look that was clearly one of disbelief. "Are you"
"I'm trying" Eiri repeated. "It's better than nothing, isn't it"
Miho considered him and then shrugged. "I guess."
The two of them were quiet for a little while longer and then Eiri stood up, dusting himself off as he did. "It's late" he said. "Let's go back inside."
After a moment, Miho nodded and stood up as well. "Okay."
"Come on." Eiri opened the door to the parking garage and paused, letting his eyes adjust. He was half-surprised when he felt a small hand touch his own and he pivoted his wrist and opened his fingers in order to grasp it.
"I don't wanna get lost" Miho said by way of explanation.
Eiri nodded wordlessly. "That's fine" he murmured. He gave her hand a light squeeze and led her through the parking garage, to the elevator, and back up the stairs. Miho dropped his hand as they approached the apartment and he glanced down at her. She did not look back up at him, and that was fine.
The apartment was quiet when they opened the door. They kicked off their shoes and then Eiri put Miho back to bed in the office. Eiri crept into his own bedroom once he knew for certain that the girl was asleep. Shuichi was quietly singing to Hibiki and Namiko, who were already sleeping quietly, curled up on either side of the singer. Shuichi started to say something, but Eiri hushed him. They carried the two children back out into the living room, returned to their room, and went to bed.
It was a long while, however, before Eiri fell asleep.
-to be continued-