-x-
Something Blue, Blue, Blue
-x-
Yusuke's first memory is just noise, motion and colors that stick together.
He remembers his mom yelling and fighting with a guy with dark hair who is bigger than her, who shouldn't be hitting her - and Atsuko is hitting back but that's not the point. The two of them always fight. That's the image that he gets. That it was normal, and this time it's different. He remembers something smashing against the wall - a sound that is bright and gold. He remembers Atsuko falling over the futon that Yusuke scrambles up from - a motion that is heavy and colored in greens and blues.
He remembers jumping on the guy, his little fists doing whatever they can. He remembers getting smacked - something red - and hitting harder - something bright blue, blue, blue.
Then Atsuko grabs him, and he remembers the dig of her fingers in his ribs, how her voice hurts his ears. He remembers the tatami floor scratching his hands, the voices and sounds tumbling away - blue, blue, red, green - until a door slams and it's quiet. He remembers Atsuko coming back, and picking him up. He was small, but she wasn't much bigger. He remembers her sitting with him curled up in her lap on the wrecked futon, in the silent apartment, rocking him and crying, all her anger washed out.
-x-x-x-
Atsuko is making a lot of noise in the kitchen.
Yusuke doesn't get his hopes up. He's nine, and he knows better.
He does glance away from the tv despite being convinced of this, just to see what she's doing in there. Smoking. Go figure. His mom is propped against the counter with the window wide open and a cigarette between her fingers, opening her mouth to idly watch the curls of smoke wisp out and up before they're blown apart by the ceiling fan.
It churns the air in the apartment, but doesn't make it any less sticky.
The a/c's been broken all summer. Yusuke is used to being outside, so the heat and stickiness doesn't bother him, but it's creeping towards nine o'clock, and the sunlight is fading, and he feels a weird compulsion to be home whenever his mom is home, however rare an occurrence that is. So he stayed in today, sweating it out. He's sat in front of the tv and peeled his sticky clothes off when it got too annoying, and watched his mother drink and smoke and sit around and fan herself without saying a word to him.
At least the heat recedes a little with the sun. The open window brings a much-needed rush of relief, cool air gusting into the apartment - if his mom wasn't choking it with smoke.
Yusuke whirls angrily from the tv again.
"Mom!"
Atsuko narrows her eyes at him and the rest of the smoke hisses out between her pursed lips as she moves to snuff the cigarette out. There isn't any room for it in the ashtray nearby so it goes in the sink that's full of dishes and starting to reek. Yusuke's stomach chooses that moment to growl, and because it's been empty all day, Yusuke lets his temper break.
"That's like the four hundredth cigarette you've smoked in an hour! I can't breathe!"
"Don't exaggerate," his mom says. She's too mellow to care if he yells at her and that just makes him madder. "And learn to count."
This last bit is directed less at Yusuke and more to the empty pack of cigarettes Atsuko plucks from the crowded countertop. She thumbs the top open just to confirm that there's nothing but loose tobacco inside, then sighs and tosses it into the sink, as well. It makes a flat, hollow sound against the dishes. Yusuke scowls at her from the futon.
Atsuko pushes back the sleeve of her thin jumper to look at her wristwatch and then rocks forward off the counter. She crosses the living room in three big strides and drops to rummage through the huge, annoying purse she never actually carries.
"You goin' somewhere?" Yusuke asks pointedly, watching her.
"That's some of your business, isn't it?"
Which means, Yes.
"What am I supposed to eat?" Yusuke asks.
Atsuko sighs and stands, another pack of cigarettes in her hand, "Heck if I know, kid."
She knows good and damn well there's nothing in the fridge except a case or two of beer, eggs and milk that are both probably bad; some stale leftover rice and mouldy bread. There aren't even any more tv dinners that he can just stick in the microwave.
Atsuko puts a new cigarette between her lips, but doesn't light it.
She slides open the closet and browses for a few minutes, finally pulling a black crop top off the hanger and a pair of tight fitting jeans. She discards her sweater and shorts on the floor, shimmying effortlessly into the jeans that look a full size too small and throwing her hair loose from the open collar of her shirt. Her bra is showing through the thin fabric.
Maybe she'll at least come home from the bar with some grocery money, if she comes back at all.
"Listen, Yusuke," she says, dipping to pick up her purse again. She unearths a zippo, lights her cigarette and breathes out the smoke as she works her bare feet into a pair of flat shoes. "Run to the corner store or something. You hungry?"
"No," Yusuke says defiantly, staring at the tv with his elbows on the table and his face in his hands.
His mom drops some cash in front of him and ruffles his hair as she passes. Her nails lightly rake over his scalp before dragging through his hair, and Yusuke tries not to think that it would be nice if she'd stay. If she'd cook curry again or something like she did that one time, and just sit and watch a dumb wrestling show with him.
Atsuko pauses with the door open, looking around the small apartment like she might've forgotten something. Yusuke sits there watching her, his heart beating fast. He's mad that she's leaving and hoping she stays even though he knows that she won't because she never ever does. Then she cracks a wide smile at him over her shoulder, and Yusuke's whole body flushes hot with anticipation.
Maybe - he's wrong - maybe - she'll stay -
"Don't cause any trouble while I'm gone, kiddo. I'll be back soon."
Be back soon could mean three hours or a week. The door shuts, and the only things left are the faint chirp of crickets in the yard carrying in through the open window, the lingering scent of smoke - and Yusuke sitting alone in front of the tv, wishing he hadn't opened his mouth.
-x-
"Yusuke, it's getting late!"
Keiko tries to say this sternly, but her giggles sneak out and the mean face she tries to hit him with crumbles. Yusuke is barefooted, upside down on the monkey bars and clinging to them just like the name suggests - with grimy hands and sweaty feet, making stupid faces at her. Keiko bends against her scraped knees, arms tight around her middle as she shakes with laughter.
When she finally looks up again, Yusuke gives her his best shit eating grin.
The blood is rushing to his head, warming his cheeks.
"S' not that late!" The sun is just starting to sink, coloring everything red and gold. The street lights blink on almost as he says it. "C'mon, Keiko, whaddya wanna go home for?"
Keiko stands beneath him, head tipped back, and plants her small fists on her hips.
"I have to finish reading that book for English class. You know we have an assignment to turn in soon - or you would, if you ever came to school."
"Aw, don't nag me."
"And Dad is cooking dinner."
Yusuke grunts at that, suddenly put off without really understanding why. He just pretends like he's not paying attention to her anymore. That always gets her goat. Keiko is used to having attention by simple virtue of being present. She asks him something ("Were you going to eat with us?") and Yusuke let's his feet swing down while still gripping the bar with both hands. He turns so all he can see is the empty playground, the dark buildings and bright lights beyond the low brick wall.
Hand over hand, he goes across the top bar.
The gravel crunches under Keiko's new shoes as she follows along below.
She says something else ("You know Dad says it's alright if you want to stay with us for a while. You can even sleep in my room with me, my bed's real comfy.") and Yusuke comes to the far end of the bar. He lifts his feet. His muscles burn with the effort to get them so high again, but at last he manages to stick his legs up between the bars and hook his knees around one of them. It gives his arms a much needed rest, and Yusuke relaxes, pushing out a breath and letting the rest of his body go limp.
He hangs there with his arms over his head, reaching for the ground. Too late, he realizes this brings him almost nose to nose with Keiko, who has climbed up the ladder and is peering at him from between the bars. She laces her arms around the one under her chin and gives him this look that makes his stomach too warm; a little worried, a little earnest; her big brown eyes a little wet.
"Yusuke, you promised you'd walk me home before it got dark."
"There's nothin' out here," Yusuke says lamely. He doesn't know why she's so scared. He stays out all the time after dark.
Keiko giggles. She reaches out and pokes him in the nose, "Except you."
"I'm not dangerous."
"I know. But you promised."
It's quiet for a second, then, "Fine." For some reason he can't argue with that look. He extends his opens hands to her, gravel deep in his dark palms. "Wanna swing down?"
Keiko blows out an unladylike breath like what he asks is dumb, but she's already climbing in between the bars so she's on the inside with Yusuke, facing him with her heels balanced on that lower bar instead of her toes. It's a lot more precarious. She lets go of the bar behind her, sucks in a breath as she starts to drift forward. Yusuke catches her hands quick and keeps her balanced.
He grins. "Ready?"
Keiko gives him a firm nod, her mouth pressed tight. Yusuke counts, squeezing her hands, "One… Two… Three!" and Keiko, squealing, steps off the bar and out into the open air. Yusuke swings her out from under the monkey bars and lets go. Keiko sticks the landing with her knees bent low, her arms bobbing at her sides, shoes dug deep into the gravel.
Breathless, she spins, her voice breaking with excitement,
"That was farther than last time, Yusuke!"
"Hell yeah it was!" Yusuke scrambles to right himself on the bars and free his legs so he can swing down, too. The ground rushes up to meet him. The impact jolts up his narrow legs, makes the bottoms of his feet numb. Yusuke lands just a little shy of where Keiko is. His dark hair falls against his face, and he grins at her and thrusts his fist into the air. "Two personal bests!"
Keiko puts a new line in the gravel with the heel of her shoe. Yusuke does the same with his bare foot, and when they race off in the growing dark, Keiko latches on to his hand again. Her fingers are smooth and warm, fitting easily around his. Yusuke tries to twist free, scowling.
"Let go!"
"No," Keiko says stubbornly, and he can't argue with that look, either.
-x-
Mrs. Yukimura towels his hair dry pretty aggressively after sending him back into the bath for the second time, because apparently there is a right and a wrong way to shower and Yusuke has been doing it wrong this whole time. That is - you're actually supposed to use soap and shampoo instead of just rubbing off under the water. And Yusuke is resentful enough at his own Mom at the moment that he lets it bleed over into this. He sits sullenly on the stool with his mouth set into a deep frown, fists twisted into the borrowed shorts.
They're Keiko's, so there are yellow flowers printed on them.
"There, now," Mrs. Yukimura says gently. She gives his head another cursory scrub with the towel, pushes his hair back to reveal his face and holds it between both her hands. She's smiling, her hands cool against his warm cheeks, and Yusuke finds it hard to keep scowling. "Don't you feel better, Yusuke? I bet you shed about ten pounds of dirt in there!"
"Maybe eleven," he says, embarrassed.
Mrs. Yukimura chuckles and drags the towel down across his head again, fluffing his hair.
"Go on, now."
Yusuke thumps down the hall to Keiko's room with a pair of clean socks in his fist. As soon as he spots her sitting at the desk, legs folded beneath her in the chair and bent over a grammar textbook, he throws them at her. She squeaks like a little mouse and pouts at him over her shoulder.
"Yusuke!"
"What?" he asks, grinning as he goes to retrieve the socks, "Where do these go?"
"On your feet, obviously."
"I don't want 'em."
"Is it because they're pink?" Keiko asks tiredly, "I have other ones - "
"I don't care what color they are, I don't want 'em on my feet."
He does care - he just doesn't want to hear Keiko tell him how stupid that is. He doesn't like pink. He likes yellow and green, and sometimes red. There's nothing dumb about having a preference. Keiko likes blue, he doesn't make fun of her for liking a boy color.
For being saturated in blues, though, her room doesn't look all that boyish. There are stuffed animals, and books, and Hello Kitty stickers peeling off the furniture in places. A school calendar is pinned up on the wall beside the desk, with dates marked off in Keiko's neat kanji, and a little blue alarm clock. The curtains in the window are blue, but they've got white flowers embroidered all over them.
Yusuke throws himself on top of the comforter with a blue and green checkered pattern, that's spread out neatly across Keiko's bed. It puffs up around him, swallowing him whole. It's nice and cool at first, but it warms quickly against his body. Yusuke sighs and sinks into it. Having your own room and your own stuff must be nice. He can't even remember the last time he felt like this.
Maybe there is something to this taking a bath every day thing.
Behind him, Keiko laughs and gets down from the desk, "Give me those."
Yusuke makes a half-hearted attempt to toss the wadded up socks over his shoulder. Keiko picks them up from the floor and stows then away in one of the drawers in her dresser. Shoving it closed, she leans against it and looks at Yusuke.
"If you change your mind, they're in this drawer. You can have whichever ones you want."
"Thanks, I'm good."
Yusuke kicks his legs against the bed and Keiko climbs up next to him, tugging the tail of her nightgown out from under her knees. Yusuke turns his face out of the comforter because he gets the feeling that she's looking at him - and he's right. Keiko is super close again, staring worriedly into his eyes with her small hands twisted together.
Quietly, she asks, "Are you worried about your mom?"
And Yusuke says, "No," wondering what he did to make her think that.
He doesn't care where Atsuko is.
She's not here. So it doesn't matter.
-x-
The little blue clock on Keiko's desk says it's after 4 in the morning when Yusuke sits up in bed, as abruptly as if he had been awake all this time and not sleeping soundly. He can barely make out the unfamiliar shapes in the room. It confuses him for a second; the whole house is dark and cool and quiet, in a way that his and Atsuko's single unit apartment never is. There's always the muffled sound of neighbors, feet thumping, muted voices, the tv playing, a kid crying, something smashing, loud laughter and music both nearby and distant.
Here he can hear the a/c humming, and Keiko's sleepy breathing beside him.
And that's it.
Yusuke slips out from under the comforter and climbs over her without making a sound, pulling the curtains back from the window.
Blue moonlight floods the room.
It's a bright, clear night.
Yusuke unlatches the window and slides it open. The sound wakes Keiko, but Yusuke is already halfway out it and in the tree by the time she becomes aware enough to realize that he's missing and look around toward the window. She scrambles upright, sitting on her knees.
"Yusuke!" her voice is urgent, barely a whisper, "What're you doing?"
Yusuke pulls his leg the rest of the way through before she can grab onto him and climbs further out into the tree before he looks back.
"I'm just gonna go see if Atsuko's home yet."
Keiko blinks at him in the dark, her lips parted slightly, brow knotted. She lifts a hand to numbly rub the sleep from her eyes and blinks at the clock, then back at Yusuke. The tree rustles when he starts to move around, trying to determine the best way to get to the ground without breaking his neck in the process. It's when he starts to climb down that Keiko seems to really wake up.
"Yusuke - "
"I'll be right back, okay?" he says impatiently, "I'll come right back if she's not home."
"It's the middle of the night."
"Sometimes she gets home really late."
"But it's the middle of the night. You can't go out by yourself."
"I'll be fine, I go out by myself all the time."
"Could you at least go out the door? That looks dangerous…"
"It's not - "
The branch in his hand snaps.
Luckily, he's climbed enough trees in his short life to know better than to only hold onto one at a time. A couple of hard falls knocked that lesson pretty firmly into him. Yusuke tightens his grip on the other branch and lets the broken one fall. It scrapes and bangs against the side of the house on the way down, a noise that roars over the gentle buzz and chirp of insects.
Yusuke stares down at it, and when he looks up he sees Keiko with her head stuck out the window, doing the same thing.
"It's not," Yusuke says again, because he doesn't want her to be scared for him.
He stays mindful of where he puts his weight after that, so he doesn't break anymore branches. Keiko holds onto the window sill and holds her breath the whole time. She relaxes when he drops the last foot or so to the ground. It's just like swinging off the monkey bars - not a big deal at all. Yusuke grins and gives her a thumbs up, then dashes off.
He had been right - Atsuko is home.
The light in the apartment is on and the door is unlocked.
Yusuke throws open the door more excitedly than he meant to and trips inside. He stands still in the doorway. The kitchen is empty, and behind it the sitting room is empty. He left the futon spread out on the floor, and that's empty, too. The tv is off, the bathroom door ajar.
"Mom?" he calls softly.
He waits a few seconds, listening hard, thinking harder. He left the light on earlier, and he just forgot… A few units down, the bass of someone's radio is thumping. It creates a pulse inside his chest, something red, gold, red, gold that he remembers like a heartbeat.
-x-
(A/n) Oh look another mom fic literally no one is surprised lmao. I may or may not continue this train of thought at some point, but tbh i'm tired of looking at it so here it is! /jazz hands
-BobTAC