Work Text:
Yugo didn’t know exactly when the boy showed up, sitting at the bench in front of the shop with a book in his hand and his messy black hair covering his face. At first, Yugo hadn’t really paid him much attention. Sure, that was his bench that the boy was sitting on and Yugo had to go around back for his smoke breaks, but Yugo wasn’t just mean enough to kick a kid off a bench. It was only after the boy started showing up every single day, sun or rain, on the bench, just reading that he got tired of it.
Yugo knew nothing of the boy except for what he observed. He looked young, maybe thirteen or fourteen and had skin that was pale yet still somehow olive tone and jet black hair with striking narrow eyes that never strayed too far from the pages of his thick books. He would sit on the bench starting at around ten in the morning all the way until the evening. Yugo supposed he only got up to leave once the sun had set too far for him to see the next word of his book .
It had been a whole week of the boy coming to Yugo’s bench when Yugo decided to intervene. There were the obvious reasons for his intervention, the first being that Yugo liked to smoke in between working on cars on that bench and on nice autumn days he’d even eat his lunch there too. Then there was the fact that some of the patrons had also noticed the kid. They’d come in to buy drinks and cigarettes after pumping their gas and would ask Yugo if that was his child or nephew or occasionally his cousin. Now Yugo was only twenty-seven, going on twenty-eight, and was much too young to be having a kid of that age. Sure he was starting to gray a bit and his dedicated work schedule had caused him to wear wrinkles into his forehead, but Yugo liked to tell himself he looked more rugged than he did old.
But Yugo would be lying to himself if he didn’t admit that the real reason for him approaching that boy one fateful Friday afternoon was because he was concerned. Surely the boy was enrolled in school, and surely the boy wasn’t attending if he was sitting on that bench reading everyday. Yugo had been like that, once. Except Yugo had been doing worse than that boy, and got himself into dangerous situations at a young age. Still, Yugo couldn’t pity the boy too much. He needed his bench back.
After working on one car with a busted tail light, Yugo grabbed two bottles of water from the store and headed outside to the bench. He sat the waters down and then slid into the seat next to the boy. The boy didn’t look up, but Yugo did catch him eyeing him from the corner of his one exposed eye.
“Hey kid”, he started, his voice rough and throaty. The kid looked up, but did not place his book down. “You know that this bench is private property? And technically you are loitering?”
The boy finally put his book down. Wordlessly, he reached into his back pocket and dug out two quarters and put them down onto the table.
“Water is fifty cents, right?”
Yugo nodded, not really knowing where the boy was going although it was a relief to finally hear the kid’s voice. Weeks of just guessing was finally put to rest when the kid spoke with his cracking, not childish but not quite through the thicks of puberty, voice.
“Great.” He grabbed one of the waters on the table, uncapped it, and took a small sip of it. “Now, I’m not loitering.”
Yugo sat silent, baffled. So the kid had a mouth on him. That was fine. Yugo did too. Lord knows it had gotten him into plenty of trouble when he was younger.
“Listen, kid. I don’t mean to be a mean adult or anything… but you really can’t sit here all day, every day. Don’t you got school or something?”
The kid shrugged indefinitely.
“Aren’t your parents worried about you? I don’t want them coming up to my shop, knocking on my door, and thinking I’ve kidnapped you or something. You can’t just–”
“Why do you actually want me to leave? If it’s a good enough reason I will. I’m not that much of an asshole.”
Yugo stared blankly at the kid. How was Yugo the one bargaining with the kid? This was his shop, his store, and his gas station. And his bench. Yugo could easily call the cops and get the kid escorted or banned, but Yugo still had some hope that he wouldn’t have to go that far.
“I want to eat my lunch and smoke my cigarettes.”
“Then do it.” The kid looked directly at him and Yugo couldn’t help but feel himself shiver a bit. The kid’s eyes were pitch black and lacked any sort of innocence that a kid of his age should have. It was just a pool of dark nothingness. “Just pretend that I’m not here. Don’t worry, I won’t bother you.”
Yugo sighed. He really wasn’t getting rid of this kid with words and he still had half a heart left to not call law enforcement on him. Instead, Yugo drew out the cigarette from the front pocket of his shirt and shuffled around his back pocket for his lighter to no avail. The kid seemed to notice this and pulled out a packet of matches from seemingly nowhere and placed them on the table without saying anything.
“Thanks”, Yugo said. And that was that.
~
The boy stopped coming around for a bit. The weekend came and went, which Yugo spent mostly binging bad dramas, drinking cheap wine, and restocking the store part of the shop. He debated heading down to the veteran bar, but decided against it. If he were to go down to the bar, he might see him, and he most definitely did not want to see the man he used to call his best friend for the first eighteen years of their life, drinking with a big group while Yugo himself would be alone in the corner. So instead, he wasted his weekend away, doing nothing.
On Monday morning, Yugo was alone (as usual), in his apartment above the shop. He had bought the place back when he was discharged and fixed it up, put in new gas pumps and bought new equipment to fix up cars. It had been a successful few years since he bought his gas station and auto-shop duo, but the money didn’t fix anything. Yugo was still terribly alone and terribly bitter. He constantly wondered what he could have done differently, if it had been him instead of Lucus, if Lucus had forgiven him yet for being a coward.
”This is what we wanted”, Lucus used to say, still smiling. “We’re gonna make a difference out here.”
Yugo couldn’t handle it. Lucus had always been a big dreamer, and maybe that’s why Yugo clung to him so much. Yugo couldn’t dream of making it to eighteen. But when he did, he followed Lucus blindly into the military. It was only when he was actually out in the battlefield did the severity of it all get to his head. Yugo hadn’t been a good person. He watched people take bullets for him, ran for his life, and saw death in many different shades. It never bothered Lucus, he loved knowing he was helping someone out there.
It was Yugo’s fault that Lucus lost his arm. If Yugo hadn’t been scared, if he had shot first while they were out in the trenches, then Lucus wouldn’t have been distracted.
”Come on, Yugo! You’ve got to get it together!” It was the last thing he would say with both arms.
Yugo didn’t know if Lucus ever had forgiven him, but Yugo knew he would never forgive himself.
Yugo toyed around with one of his guns. That was the only thing he liked about the military, target practice and the guns. It would be easy. He could just place the gun beneath his chin, pull the trigger, and then he would be gone. In death, he would not be lonely. It wouldn’t matter if Lucus forgave him or not, he would be a pile of brain and blood on the ground. It would be a while until anyone found him, so there wouldn’t be any chance of him surviving. This was good, this was it.
He positioned the gun below his chin and looked up. He would be gone soon. The blanket of death would momentarily embrace him, keeping him warm in ways the world he was brought into could not. He smiled. His suffering would be over.
Yugo glanced out his window one last time, wanting the last thing for him to see to be the browning autumn leaves and the sun slowly rising. That was his first mistake.
Yugo spotted the boy, sitting out on the bench reading his book. Damn it.
He didn’t want the kid to hear the gunshot. More than anything, he didn’t want the kid to possibly investigate the origin of the noise (and he wouldn’t put it past the kid to break into his apartment). He didn’t want that kid to be the one to find his body. Angrily, Yugo threw the gun down onto the ground, not caring if it went off and stomped out of his apartment, down the stairs, and into the shop. If he wasn’t going to die, he should at least get some work done.
Yugo opened up the garage door where inside he worked on the cars. He usually kept the garage door closed unless he absolutely needed it open, but today he decided to do something different. He noticed the kid eyeing him and smiled a bit to himself.
Yugo got started on the car, making sure to be as noisy as possible. It wasn’t a hard job. Yugo had been working on cars since he was a teenager with noteing better to do than fix up his friend’s junk cars for a few extra bucks. But still, he tried to make the work seem as difficult as he could, grunting and sighing frequently. He knew the kid could hear him, the bench was right by the garage.
After about an hour of working, Yugo decided to put his plan into action.
“Hey kid!” He shouted while underneath the car. He poked his head out from under the car and looked at the kid. “I know you can hear me! Come over here!”
The kid put his book down and walked over slowly with his hands in his pockets.
“What?”
Yugo grunted, feigning exhaustion.
“Can you hand me that wrench over there?”
The kid stared at him, dumbfounded, before handing him the wrench.
“You really needed me to do that?”
“You don’t understand cars, kid. If I get up, I might mess up one of the parts. It’s very delicate work.” Of course, he was lying. He could have easily gotten the wrench himself, but it was more fun this way.
“Then why do you do it by yourself?” The kid asked. As soon as the kid spoke, he seemed to regret it, his eyes widening and his mouth dropping slightly.
“I don’t wanna, but nobody in this town knows cars like I do. Now would you hand me that flash light too?”
Things went on like that for the next few hours. Yugo would ask the kid to grab him a tool, or hold something up, or when there was a customer he’d ask the kid to ring them up at the register after explaining how the cashregister worked. The kid didn’t seem to mind being bossed around, but at the same time he didn’t seem like he particularly liked it either. Yugo would get through to him, though. It would be his project.
“Cyclops”, he started. Yugo hadn’t bothered to ask the kid his name and the kid hadn’t asked him either. Instead, he just called the kid Cyclops. With his obnoxious hair covering half of his face, it wasn’t like Yugo was wrong to call him that. He honestly didn’t know how the kid could function like that. “I think it’s time for a break”.
While the kid had been in the shop ringing up customers (Yugo hoped the kid wasn’t pocketing any of the cash), he had secretly ordered a pizza. He hoped the kid liked pepperoni.
“A break?”
“I ordered pizza,'' Yugo explained.
They sat down at the bench outside with a box of pizza and two paper plates. Yugo let the kid pick out a soda from the shop and grabbed himself a Coke, which he popped open and nearly downed immediately.
The kid sat still at the table, not reaching for the pizza box. Eventually, he took a slice after encouragement from Yugo. The kid ate quickly, like he hadn’t really eaten in a while and it only made Yugo more curious.
“You’re sure hungry, kid.”
The kid looked up at Yugo with big wide eyes, like he had been caught doing something he shouldn’t. It was the same look he had when he had first spoken to Yugo.
“ Only because you worked me like a dog earlier”, he said after gaining composure.
“Do your parents not feed you or something?” he said casually, but there was an underlying concern in his question. Yugo wasn’t a knight in shining armor, just a few days ago he didn’t particularly care what happened to this kid, but he couldn’t help but feel a bit worried for him. The kid reminded Yugo too much of his old self for Yugo to brush away any concern.
“I eat just fine, thank you very much.”
“It don’t look like it.”
“Close your eyes then, old man.”
Yugo had to stifle back his laughter. This kid was sharp. but still, he was in interrogation mode. Laughing would only give away his cover.
“I'm not that old. I’m only 27.”
“Sounds practically geriatric to me. No wonder you struggle to operate the shop alone.”
“Don’t you got school, kid?” Yugo asked, changing the subject. “How come I see you around here sitting on my bench damn near every day? That’s got to be illegal or something.”
“I go to school when I need to. I just pop in when there’s a test.”
“And you’re passing?”
“I am. I do my homework and take the test. That’s already like seventy percent of my grade. Now, if you’re in a mood to chitchat, I’d prefer if we talk about something else. Maybe we can talk about you for a change so you can stop parenting me, old man.”
“I know I shouldn’t say this because you’re probably like twelve, but you are an asshole. And I’m not trying to parent you or anything, I just don’t want the police knocking at my door asking why I’m letting a truant loiter around. I’m not trying to be your dad or anything.”
“Trust me, if you were my dad you’d be about 6 feet shorter and covered in dirt.”
Yugo paused. His dad was dead too. Not like it mattered to him. Yugo’s dad had bolted the second he heard that he had gotten his girlfriend pregnant. Yugo remembered being fifteen and foolishly spending afternoons at his school’s computer lab, searching for any trace of his father only to find an obituary. It had messed him up for a bit. Yugo didn’t know what would happen if he ever met his father, maybe he’d yell at him or try to fight him or maybe his dad would smile and say that he’d always hoped that Yugo would come around and find him. But an obituary wasn’t what Yugo had expected nor wanted.
“Sorry kid”, he started, not exactly knowing what to say nor really caring. He’d been there and done that, so it was a bit hard to feel sympathetic. “My dad’s dead too.”
“Explains a lot”, is what the kid said.
Yugo actually laughed at that. They ate for a little while in silence and Yugo placed another slice of pizza onto the kid’s paper plate to which the kid accepted wordlessly. He didn’t exactly know why he was being so nice to this kid. He could make up lies all day about it, but it wasn’t like he had any one to tell them to.
“Why’d you open up this shop?” The kid finally asked.
This snapped Yugo snapped out of his trance.
“Huh?”
“This shop. It was abandoned for as long as I can remember until a few years back. Why’d you fix it up?”
Oh, that. The shop had been an old gas station with a second floor before Yugo bought the place. He did some repairs and decided to move into the tiny second floor before opening up the garage to do car repairs. He supposed there were a million reasons why he opened the shop, the first being that he was twenty four, heart broken, and broke, but then there was the long answer. Yugo had always been good with repairs, he had to be seeing as his mother was constantly frail and couldn’t do much around the house. Then he had met Lucus’ uncle, who was a mechanic and the rest was history. Yugo had spent hours just watching Lucus’ uncle fixing up cars in Lucus’ yard and he’d spend his free periods at school in the computer lab watching documentaries on cars. When youtube came out, he had spent hours watching car videos. Then he joined the military, blindly following Lucus, and that put an end to his car dreams. But then he was twenty-four, alone and in need of money. Getting a loan and opening his own shop seemed like the most full-proof way for him to rack in income, and the rest was all history.
“I’ll answer that question if you tell me why you don’t go to school.”
The kid seemed to consider it, his thin eyebrows furrowed and his lips pursed. He took another bite of his pizza, this time not as ravenous as before, and sighed.
“Okay, but you go first.”
Yugo knew that there was a good chance that the kid wouldn’t even tell him his part, but Yugo felt like talking a bit.
“I’ve always liked working on cars. I guess it’s always been a dream of mine to become a mechanic as stupid as it sounds. Most kids my age wanted to be a doctor or a lawyer or a teacher, but I’ve always loved three things in life: cars, guns, and something that is entirely a different story. I joined the military when I was eighteen, and when I got out I decided to use whatever money I had to open this place up. I grew up around here and it just felt right.”
The kid actually seemed interested in what Yugo had to say. His narrowed eyes rounded slightly and he raised his brows. It was the most emotion Yugo had seen in him.
“Okay, I guess it’s my turn now.” No feedback, no praise (not like Yugo was expecting any from him), no follow up questions, no snarky comeback, no anything. He had soaked in Yugo’s story and that was it. Yugo respected it.
“I don’t go to school because it’s boring. I know everything already. It also makes my mom mad, which is funny. I’m still passing though, so she can’t really get on me. Like I said, I take the tests and my friend texts me a picture of the homework. I have straight C’s, which is fine. I don’t feel like going to school ever and I get bored at home, so I walk around and read.”
It wasn’t exactly what he was expecting. Yugo had thought that maybe the kid was getting bullied or he was avoiding a teacher or something. But no, the boy was simply bored with school. What a fucking weirdo.
“I think we should get back to work,” Yugo decided to say.
They headed back into the shop and Yugo started talking about the car he was working on. He let the boy hold up the trunk while he worked on it and taught him how to replace the hood strut. They talked a bit while working and Yugo found out that the boy was thirteen almost fourteen, he lived alone with his mom, and he surprisingly did have friends. Yugo didn’t quite believe the last part.
The kid, Cyclops, grew tired. His thin arms shook as he retrieved parts for Yugo and he yawned with increasing frequency. Yugo felt a little bad for him, remembering the first few weeks he had started to help Lucus’ uncle out a bit and the fatigue he’d feel every night. But mixed along with the fatigue was a sense of accomplishment, those days were the first few that Yugo had genuinely felt proud of himself. The small enclave of softness Yugo still had left hoped that this kid would feel the same when he went home, wherever his home was.
“Hey, kid”, Yugo started when the sun started going down and he himself felt too tired to continue. “Are you coming back tomorrow?”
The kid glanced up from the trunk of the car they were working on, sweat and pride dripping down his face. He looked at Yugo with determination, his black pools of nothingness suddenly warm, if that was even possible. And yet, he merely shrugged.
“If I sit on your bench, are you going to put me to work again?”
“Well, I’ve got an order of supply coming in and I’d prefer not to restock alone.”
“I guess I can stop by then.”
Yugo nodded, fighting the smile that threatened to crease his lips. For the first time in a while, he felt like he had won some pointless and abstract battle, but a win was a win and Yugo would take anything he could get. He knew from how the kid was like a walking mirror, a reflection of a Yugo that had existed long before, that the kid felt the same. A small victory in a lifetime of losses.
“If you tell me your name, I’ll give you a ride home”, Yugo said. He felt bold. There was the part when in taming a dog that you have to eventually approach it, and if the dog gets scared off then maybe there’s no use in bringing it home anyways. “Mine is Yugo.”
The kid flinched, like Yugo had slapped him open palm and everything, and Yugo wondered if he had stepped too far. But then, like the clouds scurrying off after a sunshower, the boy allowed himself to smile ever so slightly.
“My name is Ray.”