Thanks for your patience, here you meet probably the only OC in this fic.
The Morning After
By Tiemiosho
Chapter Three: 08.58
"You're in deep shit, Dad," Yusuke's teenager shrugged as she gulped down her black coffee. Yusuke, for the life of him couldn't understand how she could like coffee straight with no flavoring or cream, but from what he had heard, many demons loved the stuff, too.
Thank you for your warm support, daughter. Yusuke thought bitterly as he stirred his latte. Why did he go to Akira first, anyway? The bluntest, rudest, most insensitive child he had ever known? Other than himself, that is.
"So let me get this straight." Akira clarified as she set her coffee down. "You were out screwing around with your demon friends for days on end, came home, was surprised that see that Mom decided to move out, looked for her for hours, then finally found her with your best friend, then beat him to within an inch of his life, even though he isn't that young anymore, is that right?" She inquired with a mixture of disdain and amusement. The way she squinted at him communicated whatever patronizing her diologue had left out.
"...yeah?" Yusuke braced himself for one of Akira's lectures. She had inherited her mother's smarts, that was not good.
"Are you retarded?" Akira wasn't the emotional type that would make you feel obligated, or the preaching type that would annoy the crap out of you. She was the special genius type that would state what was apparently obvious and make you feel stupid. She never raised her voice, and Yusuke never remembered hearing her cry. She just had an excellent way of forcing people to straighten up, whether it was beating their brains out or giving hard lectures that would make a grown man cry.
"You know Mom, right? She isn't exactly thrilled to have a bum like you as a husband."
Yusuke bit his lip.
"But obviously she loved you enough to be married to you for this long. Both good reasons why you shouldn't 've flaked out in the first place." Akira droned and leaned back into the booth seat.
"You know," Yusuke was getting more and more irritated by her by the second. He scoffed; he felt like shit already. "You don't seem too shocked that I found your mom with another man!"
Akira shook her head matter-of-fact-ly with another gulp. "You kinda neglected her, didn'tcha? So you basically forced her to fulfill her needs somewhere else."
Yusuke buried his face in his hands. Akira was right. Hell, she was always right. "How much does a 16-year-old know, anyway?" He muttered inaudibly.
Akira allowed a long pause before loudly slurping at the last remnants of her coffee. "Can't imagine how Tora's gonna take the news."
Yusuke looked up. "Why?" He had to beat around the bush when asking the triplets of they had heard from Keiko. As far as they knew, they were still all one big happy family.
"'Why?' Oh Dad, you know Tora!" Akira rolled her eyes. "He's still such a tender little guy. I mean, he still doesn't have the balls to ask his dorm tutor out. And he idolizes you. How do you think he'll like to hear that his hero is a loser? And he's a total momma's boy. I don't think he'll like to hear that you broke and Mom broke up."
True.
Yusuke's silence gnawed on Akira's nerves. She took another nervous glance at her watch. 9:04. "Look, Dad." She sighed. "I know you're having a tough time, having that fallout with Mom and all, but I really need to get to school."
Yusuke scowled at his youngest daughter. How could she put a stupid test over all this? "You know, sometimes I'm not even sure if you are my kid!" The words flew out of his mouth too soon. Thoughts of Keiko and Kuwabara flew through his head.
"Maybe now is not a good time to go off on that tangent?" Akira suggested as her father banged his head on the table and moaned in agony.
"I didn't mean to think that!" Yusuke sat up and winced at his own made-up thoughts, grabbing fistfuls of hair.
"We can do a paternity test if it would make you feel better."
"Shaddup," Yusuke pouted, elbows on the table and hair still in his hands.
There was a long pause, as Akira waited for her father to finish up his latte. He didn't even touch it.
She sighed loudly again, and Yusuke noticed just how much she looked like her mother. Brown hair cropped short, and thick enough to look puffy and girly. Same face, same eyes...
"Dad, I'm guessing you're making me skip English class on test day because you want some advice." She straightened her trendy summer uniform and crossed her arms. Clearing her throat, Akira leaned across the table to look her father square in the eyes. "So here goes, you got centuries on end available for you to screw around. But Mom has only so much time to live."
Ouch. Thanks for reminding me.
"This is her time, Dad. But we all know you too well. You just aren't capable of giving her what she needs."
This is what Yusuke meant in that part about Akira's lectures making grown men cry. He recalled over twenty years ago, fighting Toguro.
"You have no idea what it's like, do you? To lose your beloved?" Toguro's voice, however, remained dry of emotion, like it always was.
"No and I never will because I won't let that happen." Those were the jinxing words flying out of Yusuke's mouth. So ironically foreshadowing. "I actually look forward to growing old with her."
It was almost as if Toguro knew that Yusuke would become a demon, although unintentional in his case and without the "selling your soul" part.
"Kuwabara's just more focused than you. He can really dedicate himself to something--Mom needs stability like that. And, I guess just as important, he's a human." Akira looked thoughtfully at the table's ugly white surface. "I don't think demons should be with humans."
"Oh, so you're going all separate-but-equal on humans, now?" Yusuke scoffed. "Lemme remind you that I chose for you to be born a demon!" Yes, Yusuke's children were well-educated about their demon-mixed heritage and the goofy genetics behind it.
"Yeah, you were hammered that night, spare me the details. Just drink your damn coffee!" Akira was getting a little edgy. "Think! Granddaddy Raizen fell in love with a human woman, then starved himself to death after she died 'cuz he missed her so. And did you ever wonder why Kuwabara never actually confessed his love to Yukina?"
"You know about Kuwabara and Yukina?" That was way far back when Kuwabara last had his goofy speeches about his undying love for Yukina. Yusuke had no clue that his kids would have any idea about that stuff so far back.
"All life's mysteries can be answered through Botan's wide open mouth."
Should've known.
"I guess Kuwabara loves Yukina enough not to tell her. He doesn't want her falling in love with a him and then watching his fragile human body wither and die. That'd be a little rude."
"And so maybe Keiko caught on?" Yusuke didn't need a reply. He knew what he had to do.
