#cuz its like ‘but they abused you so horribly why would you ever miss them

[tabbytiger]

man

[koalacolbss]

If Only You Were Mine <3 Pt 1

{A Colby Brock Fluff}

I looked at Colby as he sat there at his desk with his head down sleeping ofc. aaah classic colby always sleeping... I guess I should begin with who I am. My name is y/n, m/n, l/n. And Iv'e been best friends with Cole Robert Brock, Sameul John Golbach, and Katrina Stuart for about 7 years now, we all met back in 4th grade.

Sam, Colby and Kat have all known each other longer but that's when I met them. I guess you could say they took me in, yeah that's it really, they took me under there arms when my abusive dad kicked me out. I was the only one in the friend group who was single, although iv'e liked colby for years i never got the courage to ask him out and one day he got a girlfriend, also known as my best friend, in most stories like this people say it was the friends fault cuz they knew you liked them but in this case it was mine, and when i told her i liked him she felt horrible because she was already with him and didnt want to hurt him so we stayed friends and they stayed dating.

Yeah..it sorta hurts to walk inside and hear her moaning his name when in your head you think it should be you. I live with sam colby and kat its cool i guess i get to be featured in their yt videos more then amber, my best friend. Amber and I agreed I could be in the YT vids more and she would be colbys gf. Anyways lets get back to the story yeah?

*3 hours later*

I walked into the house after soccer practice and just as expected im the only other one home except colby and amber who both are upstairs in colbys room making love to each other. I tear up a little but try to hide it as kat walks inside.

Kat: y/n?...why are you crying??

y/n: *thoughts* Oh shit- i must have a few tears oops...

all of a sudden i lost it. yep. you heard me i started bawling as kat cradled me into her arms

Kat: Y/N!!!!...what happened???

y/n: *sighs* I like colby...I have for years and I was to chicken to confess and so Amber asked him out and she didnt know I liked him so she felt bad but i told her to date him cuz i didnt want him to be hurt again..

Colby: *stops walking down the stairs* What?...*looks at amber* i-is that true love?

Amber: *nods yes* Im sorry.... I do like you but she liked you first and i felt bad when i found out...we should break up colbs im sorry she needs you more then i do..*leaves*

Colby: *looks at you* ykw...GET OUT Y/N!! YOU FUCKED IT ALL UP!!! DONT COME BACK TO OUR SCHOOL MOVE OUT OF THIS STUPID TOWN I DONT WANNA SEE YOUR DUMB FACE EVER AGAIN *picks y/n up and tosses you outside*

Sam: COLBY STOP ITS NOT HER FA-

Then the door slammed. And that was the last time I heard from colby. until I got the message.

*5 years later*

I was sound asleep when it happened. someone called me but i was to lazy to get up so i let it ring until the voicemail came, I was expecting spam or something but a familiar voice came through the speaker: "Hey y/n...um im not sure if you remember me my name is Colby. Cole Robert Brock. It's been awhile and I wanted to tell you how much I love you, this is my confession, its been years and I'm sure it's silly to you for me to apologize 5 years later but im sorry, I love you i truly do, Ik your back in kansas and all and I know you won't get this message cuz im not gonna send it to you cuz im fuckin stupid and to chicken to send it through but i wanted you to know i miss you so much and i wish i did things the right way that 5 years ago i think your really cute we should han-" **voicemail ended**

I was shocked. Colby did something I thought he never would do, he accidently sent me his confession, and an apology??!?!?!.. Man if he really sent this it must be worth it to call back and accept to meet up.. so i walked over to the phone and picked it up i hit the call back button and waited while it rang.

*MEANWHILE*

***Colbys POV***

Shit. shit. shit. I didnt mean for it to actually send through I feel horrible about how I overeacted 5 years ago but I wasn't ready to talk to her yet...she probably hates me why would she ever forgive me? I always had anger issues but i kicked her out of her own house. it was ours but still. she owned a part of it. then the phone rang and with a trembling hand i picked it up and answered it. "H-hello?"

y/n: *over the phone* Hey uhhhh i got your message- before you hang up yes i do except your apology and yes we should totally meet up somewhere.

colby: Oh nice! we should meet up at chick-fi-la! ill pay for us both if youd like?

y/n: yea! sure! sounds great colbs! maybe we can start over?

colby: y-yeah! yeah! i would love that!

y/n: ok...goodbye colbs see you tomorrow?

colby: yep. sounds like a date yn!! byeeee

then i hung up. god i must have sounded so dumb to her but inside my chest feels tingly and my stomach has butterflies. i turned around and looked at sam. "well...i did it brother i apologized to her."

sam: thats good. maybe youll date her tooooo"

colby: woah- lets not go that far maybe shes just waiting till she gets here to yell at me...

sam: whatever dude.

[codename-adler]

Dear Tumblr toxicity,

Hi. Adler here. We need to talk.

- TW: mental health issues, depression, bipolar disorder, self-harm, homophobia, transphobia, coming out, xenophobia, islamophobia, racism, implied sexual content, rape, non-con, addictions, abuse, parental negligence, depictions of violence, swearing (please message me kindly if I forget anything)

- What prompted this message: The release of Skam France S7 teaser (emphasis on teaser, will get into that below)

- Where I’m coming from: I will talk from the pov of a white, cis and queer 22-years-old woman (she/her); this is the pov that affects my experiences and the opinions I will share below; but my message comes from a place of deep hurt, and love

- What this is about: My goal is to share a recurring experience that has hurt me in order to spread a message of awareness, maturity, peace and love

- Central content: Skam France, Skam Wtfock, and Skam/remakes in general

From now on I will assume people have enough information for me to talk about the topics without explaining every plotline/character. There are plenty of wiki pages to help you out and I will gladly answer any (respectful) questions asked if a plothole bothers your comprehension of my message. I’m only making these assumptions in order to alleviate the text.

January 9th, 2021.

The francetv slash YouTube channel releases an unexpected teaser video for an equally unexpected seventh season Skam France. The video features Tiffany, a white, cis female teenager, going into labour from denial pregnancy just after winning what appears to be a gymnastics championship. Overall, the video and its release are very dramatic.

The character of Tiffany, also called Tiff, was previously seen on season 6 of Skam France as a bully who persecuted the main character, Lola, both at school and on social media. Outside of this characterization, nothing is known about her. It is majorly accepted that Tiff is not a liked character; she rather poses as one of the antagonists of Lola’s arc.

Now you know the details of what happened, in the most objectively possible way. 

Now I’ll speak for myself.

Before I went digging around for people’s reaction, here is what I initially thought of this video.

1) Shock: I thought Skam France was over, so... Big, big shock.

2) Excitement: I hold this web series very close to my heart. It has gotten me through depressive episodes, anxiety attacks, coming out to my best friend. To see this new development? It couldn’t bring me more joy.

3) Curiosity: I recognized Tiff immediately. I was intrigued as to what would happen to her to set off a new season in true Skam Fr fashion. As soon as she started gripping her stomach, I knew she was pregnant and wasn’t aware of it. Big, big surprise here again.

4) Numbness/Overthinking: As I stared at my screen, motionless, my mind went off. What did it mean? How did she not know? Who is the father? Do we know him? Will the baby survive? Where are the other characters? Will Lamifex be present? What? How? When? Why? Who?

5) Disappointment: No, I did not like Tiff one bit in S6. Yes, I sincerely wished for a season on either Jo (ambiguous and funny teenage girl, cis + white), Sekou (seemingly neurodivergent teenage boy, cis + black), and my favorite, Max (mysterious and grave teenage boy, trans + white) So why Tiff? It felt to me like a missed opportunity, but I did not lose hope.

So, these were the five stages of my emotional process. And then I made the terrible mistake to go look for the fans’ reaction. I didn’t even look at the YT comments, I didn’t go on Instagram, I went directly here on Tumblr. Why? I’m still asking myself that. From S1 to S6 of Skam Fr, I kept my love for the show to myself and only looked at ig and video edits. I tried once, and only once, to look it up on Tumblr, and was greeted by fervent agressivity, disrespect and hate. Why did I ever forget that after watching the S7 teaser? I still don’t know.

The reactions on this platform were wild. People are furious (I get that). People are disappointed (I get that). People are anxious (I get that). People are also verbally agressive, insensitive, hateful, disrespectful and bullies. I don’t get that.

Comments along the lines of “What she gonna do with a fucking baby?”, “Are we gonna watch the baby do nothing all fucking season?”, “Wowwww, teenage pregnancy, so new and relatable!” (note the sarcasm made in the comment here), “Who gives a shit about Tiff?”, etc. 

And then all the mistakes Skam Fr ever made flooded back onto the feed. The wlw misrepresentation, the whitewashing, the overdramatization, the dubious sex scenes between minors, all of it.

Let’s take a break here. Do I condone these mistakes? Nope. Am I a white-bully apologist? Nope. Did I forget every horrible action Tiff has made in the past? Nope. She manipulated a whole school against Lola, she profited from Lola’s mother’s death, she bullied her, harrassed her, pushed her deeper into mental distress. Tiff was a despicable character that I never once liked. The way she was played by the actress made it clear that Tiff was not intended to be a good guy. If I could replace her as the main of S7, I would, in a heartbeat. I’d choose, as I said, Jo, Sekou or Max.

Skam France deeply lacks diversity and made mistakes when attempting to diverse the issues represented. This is not an opinion, it’s a fact. 

Poc representation is very, very low. Only one season has a woc of Islam beliefs as mc (Imane, S4) with poc entourage/family. Only 2 other characters not related to Imane were poc (Sekou and Sarah, S1-S2). These 2 characters were very in the background and served to further the mc’s plotline, they had no real content. (I am not a poc, and so my opinion does not matter here. If you are not poc, your “opinions” don’t matter here, this point is not for you to debate. These are facts.)

While I do not particularly find the wlw representation bad, I do understand how it hurts/bothers other queer women. From my perspective, the bar was very low regarding my expectations of the Lola/Maya pair (none of them died *yay* they had a happy ending *yay* they were not typically overfeminized or overmasculinized *yay* Lola  and Maya were respectful of each other, understood each other, accepted each other with all their flaws and their beauty *yay* I truly believed in their love and it gave me confidence and hope *yay* I ould really go on but this is not my main point so I’ll stop here) Regardless of my opinion on Mayla, I understand that to some queer women, it was bothering/hurtful. (If you are anything other than a woman / wlw, this point is not for you to debate. Keep your “opinions” to yourself, it does not matter here. These are facts.)

Like every remake of the original Skam where the S4 was given to Sana/Imane, the Muslim community was not represented at its best, at its most beautiful and respectfully. The character of Imane, although she is my favorite girl of the series, was not portrayed in a way that respected the majority of the Muslim community. (If you are anything other than Muslim, this point is not for you to debate. Our opinions do not matter here. These are facts.)

And so the same goes for the portrayal of sexual assault and child pronography in S2, of mental illness and homophobia in S3, of disabilities in S5, of addiction, transphobia, self-harm and neurodivergence in S6. Again, if you are not part of these communities, your opinions do not matter on these issues. These are facts that are not up for debate.

In other words, Skam France, as well as the original Skam, Skam Wtfock, Skam España, and probably all the others I haven’t watched in their entirety, are NOT perfect shows. They (maybe) tried their best to portray issues of the younger generations that are ugly, shameful, taboo, hard-to-swallow-pills. Of course they made mistakes. Of course they have to be held accountable. Of course they can and should do better. Of course it must be spoken about.

Here is my problem.

The so-called “fans” shamelessly SHITTING on the WHOLE show because of ONE TEASER TRAILER. (btw, this is where I get angry)

I am not talking about the fans making fun of the show and this season’s premise like “Better MCs than Tiff for S7: a romance between the car that almost hit Lucas S3 and the car that hit Arthur S5, or the school’s nurse, or Imane’s dad, or Elu’s rabbit” (that shit’s funny and I’d watch all of these).Or the joke about Wtfock and Skam Fr shaking hands while signing the same contract to disappoint the fans with white MCs (it’s funny cuz it’s trueeeee).

I am not talking about the fans criticizing the producers’ choice of Tiff as MC. There is a difference between shitting on issues and adressing/discussing them. I WANT to talk about how this season’s issue would have been so much better if a woc, specifically a black woman, had been the MC, because black women and doctors are a whole different level of issue than white women and doctors. Add on top of that an unplanned teenage pregnancy? It would have been IMMACULATE. I WANT to talk which wlw couple was better represented, Mayla or Croana/Crisana, and why is that. I WANT to talk about disabilities in black and poc communities. I WANT to talk about headcanons, AUs, to rectify the missed marks. I WANT to talk about our takes on seasons about Max, Sekou and Jo, instead of Tiff’s.

I DO NOT WANT TO TALK ABOUT YOUR SHITTY, NEGATIVE, UNHELPFUL, HURTFUL COMMENTS.

Just because the protagonist is white, doesn’t give you ANY right to dismiss the issue that is unplanned teenage pregnancy. This is a problem that affects countries WORLDWIDE. Do you know how many deaths are related to minors giving birth? Do you know how many babies die at birth from these pregnancies? Do you have any idea the trauma it puts you through, to go into labor without even knowing you were pregnant in the first place, and then giving birth, and then having to care for a defensless human being? The dilemma of keeping it, or giving it away? The fear that lives in every person able to give birth, that one day they’ll become pregnant, because society turns sych a shameful look to that? No matter your ethnicity, your gender identity, your sexuality, your political stance or whatever shit you bring up to justify your disgraceful and downright degrading comments, YOU HAVE NO RIGHT TO SAY THAT A MINOR GIVING BIRTH IS NOT AN ISSUE. 

You think the topic has been covered plenty before? Yeah, because shows like “16 and pregnant” and “I Didn’t Know I Was Pregnant!” are such good examples and show the reality with such an objective point of view! 

Bullshit. Teenage pregnancy is still a taboo, it still kills, and people are still morons about it. 

“Well I guess everybody is secretly pregnant now!” No, Jessica, but you wouldn’t know about it, would you? Because I wouldn’t tell you shit if you were my “friend” and I was going through it. The whole message of all the Skams is not that it presents super relatable issues of teenagers, although it is a big topic of the show. They present some issues that affect the youth in an authentic light, but that’s not it.

Tous les gens que tu rencontres mènent un combat dont tu ignores tout. 

Sois indulgente. Toujours. x x x

//

Everyone you meet is fighting a battle you know nothing about.

Be kind. Always. x x x

THAT’S THE MESSAGE. THAT’S THE WHOLE POINT OF THE SHOW.

And you all missed it.

All of you making dead baby jokes and death threats, degrading people who give birth, shaming teenagers for their pregnancies... Listen to yourselves.

“Well she deserves it, she was such a bitch!” No, Michael, you shit stick. Let’s rewind a bit for you, yeah? It was a GOD DAMN TEASER. We literally know nothing! Nothing at all! Why are y’all getting mad when we saw 3:25 minutes representing a whole ass season! Listen to yourselves. Y’all judge so fast for people pretending to love Skam and its authenticity and its motto.

You say Tiff is irredeemable?

Emma cheated on her boyfriend.

Manon lied and manipulated her friends.

Lucas was homophobic and prejudiced agaisnt mentally ill people.

Imane was homophobic too and went behind her friends’ back to get what she wanted.

Arthur cheated on his girlfriend too.

Lola dragged Elliot down with her in her addiction, lied, was verbally abusive, etc.

ALL THE MAINS ARE PROBLEMATIC.

Any guess why?

BECAUSE THEY ARE TEENAGERS. THEY ARE STILL GROWING AND LEARNING.

Yet we still loved them all. 

So don’t you dare tell me that Tiff deserves this, that her baby deserves to die, that teenage motherhood is irrelevant. Motherhood is not a curse in the first place, nor is it something to wish to inflict upon anyone. Motherhood is different for every single person and nobody except the person living with it can have an opinion on that. We don’t even know if the baby survived, for God’s sake!

There is no excuse for this kind of behavior..

It makes me so angry. Women are discriminated against in a fandom I thought was safe, again and again and again. 

I have to stop here because, well, this is just too much. There is much wrong with Skam (the original AND all the remakes), but there is even more wrong with the fans. I’m done.

You don’t support the show anymore? Fine, then don’t watch it! If I really am wrong, the number of viewers will go down and the show will die, just like you wished. There is no need to be vicious about it. 

I hope y’all are proud of your misogyny. 

Sincerely,

Adler.

[autisticangus]

anyway im so out of the loop on the mcelboys

i pretty much only keep semi-up to date with Sawbones at this point, not cuz i dont still LIKE everything else, just a lot has been goin on in my life

if anyone wants a long and rambly update on All Of The Bullshit im gonna stick a read more down here, asks are open and its cool to message me abt any of it if u want cuz i have some really nice and cool followers/mutuals here that make me comfy talkin abt that shit

as far as the future of this blog goes i wanna start using it more again! the mcelroys have gotten me out of some really dark places before so i hope having more connection to this community and the people here and their content again will help me like it has in the past! ill probs post more general mcelroy content here than previously rather than just taz btw i just gotta fuckin uhhhhh,,,, catch up on a bunch of shit again before this blog is even semi active lmaoo but im like alive and on tumblr regularly again!!

Wow u clicked on this and wanna hear me talk? Ur awesome and sweet, thanks for caring!

These past two years have been extraordinarily tough. This is gonna be a pretty long and detailed post that deals with the sensitive topics of emotional abuse, abusive relationships, and alcoholism. Please read on with caution.

Back in March of 2019, so this was about 3-4 months after i left tumblr, I got a new boyfriend and things started out really good, he was kind of a "bad boy" and it was fun at first. Im kind of a goody-goody so it was very interesting for me at first to be with someone so different who had such different life experiences than me. I liked hearing his stories of living in a traphouse, and running with gangs, and selling drugs, and knowing people who had killed people. I assumed a LOT of it was lies, obviously, who just brags about that shit u know? I just rolled with it, didnt take it seriously, and found the imagined scenarios interesting to listen to. So much of it was obviously played up to make him seem cooler, and I shouldve seen that as the red flag it was, and all my friends did but I didnt. 

He had a serious alcohol problem, I mean I had coffee in the morning and he had 2 four lokos before noon. it was bad. about 6 months into the relationship he decided i was cheating on him with my ex who i had recently reconnected with, we missed being friends and things were really going well talking and being friends again, he was really important to me! but my boyfriend saw this as yet another thing i was doing wrong. when he decided i was cheating, that become his focus of alcoholic rage. nearly every time he got drunk, which was several times a week, he would accuse me of things, he would yell and scream, he would call me horrible names and make me cry for literal hours, he never hit me but that shouldnt even matter, i was emotionally battered and mentally bruised and everything hurt. he gaslit me into believing i said and did things i never said or did, i admitted to things that were not real, and then i was yelled at for admitting them. i didnt know what to do.

he was threatening my ex too, he would get drunk and say he knew where he lived (he didnt) or he knew what car he drove (he didnt) and explained to me many times that although he had never killed someone, people had been killed before at his command. he said a bullet in the back of my ex’s brain was just a phone call and $500 away. somedays he would tell me he was just going to do it himself, with a hammer, or a kitchen knife, or whatever weapon he could get his hands on during his explanation of how he would do it. my only option was to agree, to say it didnt matter to me what happened to him, i had to pretend my on

/ly concern was him going to jail for the crime, if i showed any sign that i didn’t want my ex murdered, it clearly meant i was cheating on him. 

i pretended to block my ex on social media to get him off my back and it worked a little bit but he still brought it up. and even if he didnt directly mention him, he would always tell me when he was drunk that i was the cause of all his problems, i was why he was so self conscious, i was why he drank so much, i was why he had to work so hard, i was why every single issue he had was happening. logically i knew it was wrong, but i was so conditioned to it by then that i just went with it. i knew that agreeing and apologizing made the fighting end quicker.

things spiraled this past summer. his job needed us to relocate so we moved like 4 states away, away from all my family and friends, and lived in a tiny hotel room for a month. during this time, his drinking was somehow worse. he was drunk literally every night but he was passing out so we didnt fight and i was relieved. i was depressed being stuck in the hotel room all day alone, but thankful i wasnt being abused at least. then he started getting into drunken fistfights with his coworkers in the hotel parking lot. one day he came home just in time to find one of his drunk coworkers trying to break into the room with me there desperately trying to keep him out. i was terrified and wanted to go home but he convinced me to stay. a couple weeks after that we travelled for his work again several more states away. his drinking got a little bit better here, but i was so depressed and lonely, i was so isolated, he was all i saw day in and day out besides his coworkers and i was nervous around them. one day the guy who tried to break in on me, purposefully, while drunk, hit another coworkers car and totaled it and tried to run the guy over and i saw the whole thing. a week later my boyfriend was also fired because he got so drunk he passed out in the hotel parking lot and the company needed to save face with the hotel after the whole car incident. 

so we travelled back home, but not my home, to his where we lived isolated on a mountain with no phone signal or wifi. the house was old and not well kept from being empty for several years, half the appliances didnt work. i was more isolated than i have ever been in my life. for 4 months i stayed there and just dreaded him coming home because i knew he would be drunk again and he'd yell or accuse me of things or otherwise belittle me. it was horrible. my friends all said to leave and my parents said to leave but i was so brainwashed into thinking that if i was just a good little housewife and if i just stayed home and did the dishes and the laundry that he would be nicer but he still found things to point at and say i was cheating. he was also becoming really controlling about my food intake and weight and i already struggle with an eating disorder so that just made me feel even more like i had to stay, my brain felt like if i wasnt under his watchful eye id gain weight again, like somehow it was thanks to him i had lost weight and not my own choices.

one day last week i expressed to him wanting to leave, saying how unhappy i was, i told him how sad i felt and how i didnt think we were such a good match. he didnt take me seriously, so the next day when he got sloppy drunk before 5 pm i packed a small bag and went to my moms. i was just gonna stay for a night or two but he called and screamed at me for leaving without telling him, i told him he just didnt remember me telling him because he was so drunk, and he accused me of not caring about his feelings and made me sound like the bad guy for leaving without his permission. i told him it was just for a few days but the angrier he got the more i knew i was in the right and told him i was done. i told him we were breaking up and id come get my stuff soon.

i got my stuff while he was at work this past weekend and moved in with my best friend. im safe and happy now. things are looking so much better for me and im so thankful to my friends and family who supported me all the way to the end.

i just wanted to make this post because, i know its not mcelroy related, and a lot of ppl probably dont care for stuff like this on this kind of blog, but i think its important.

its important to friends and family of people in abusive relationships to be steady. dont give up your ground. even if the person keeps pushing back and wont leave the person, keep being there for them, it can take a long time, it took me almost 2 years to leave, it takes some people even longer, but just stay there for them and be there for them when they finally make that step. dont give up on them.

and to those who have been in these kinds of relationships, and especially those who are there right now: it is not your fault. it is so, so hard to leave, i know, but please try to find help and support and resources to do it. if all your friends dont like someone, theres a good reason for it. please dont fall into the trap of thinking your friends dont have the best intentions for you. there are so many things you may overlook in the moment that others can see from a mile away are horrible. especially if you have been abused in the past. its incredibly hard to tell what is a red flag when your gut instinct is that anything and everything is a red flag. surround yourself with people who you can trust and listen to them

and trust me, i know how hard it is when youre stuck in that spot of KNOWING you should go but fearing that first step away. its scary. its difficult. but it is worth it. find someone safe you can be with. and if you arent sure, find a reason to leave for just a few days, an excuse, anything. give yourself space from the abuser, tell yourself youre going back in a couple days, just get out from under the thumb long enough to clear your head and things will make more sense with the fog lifted.

when i first got in my car and put my kitten on my lap and told her we were going to my moms for a couple nights, i didnt know if that was the truth. i planned to come back and i knew i didnt want to. i only took enough stuff for a couple days. i couldnt imagine my life changing so drastically. where would i live? how would i make money? who take care of me? i had no clue about any of those things. but after a couple days away I realized i would take care of me. i remembered that i had worked jobs before i was with him, i could do it again. i remembered that i had options of where to live. all of those things were so clouded when i was with him, they felt like impossibilities. once i was away, even just for a short time, things were so much easier to parse.

and i know i had many privileges in this journey not everyone is afforded, and my heart goes out to those who read this and are in this situation and the options i had just arent accessible to you, i am so sorry, i wish i had something more to offer you but all i have is my story, and a wish that it gives you some hope at the very least, and a promise that if you need someone to talk to, im here, i will listen, and you will be heard and loved.

i just want everyone who reads to take something small but important away from it. love your friends, love yourself. please stay safe. please dont give up. remember love should not hurt.

[chroniccombustion]

Caught in the Grey (ch 5)

Genre: Trans!AU, hurt/comfort, romance, angst with a happy ending Rated: T Characters: Souji Seta (Yu Narukami), Yosuke Hanamura, Naoto Shirogane, Kanji Tatsumi, Investigation Team, Izanagi/Shadow!Souji Warnings: depression, dysphoria, disassociation, self-hatred, implied suicide attempt, suicidal thoughts, mentions of homophobia, implied past child abuse and transphobia, canon-typical violence, mild sexual content Status: multi-chapter, incomplete

Playlist: Spotify | Youtube <- previous chapter | next chapter ->

He turns the music up higher, crossing his arms tightly over his chest and hunching inward as if he can somehow make himself small enough to hide from his own mind.

‘You’re just going to ruin everything like you always do. You push and you whine until nobody can stand you anymore. That’s why Souji isn’t speaking to you.’

Shaky, anxious energy tingles its way down Yosuke’s legs, settles in his bones like a live current through a power line.

‘Maybe it’ll be a good thing if he doesn’t show up to school – you really want him to see your shitty self-absorption? Cuz he will. You know he will; it’s Souji, nothing gets past him. He’ll take one look at you and he’ll know.’

Chapter 5: We’re Not Lovers

“Said that we’re not lovers,  cuz we’re just strangers  with the same damn hunger  to be touched, to be loved, to feel anything at all…”

- (“Strangers – feat Lauren Jauregui”, Halsey)

November

Yosuke sits under the frigid cascade of water until the entire bathroom becomes an icebox, forcing him to finally push to his feet and shut the shower off just to stop the way his body has begun to violently shiver. He barely feels it, only notices because of how his skin prickles with goose bumps and his hands fumble with the knobs. Climbing out of the shower, he grabs a towel and halfheartedly dries himself off, scrubs it through his hair a couple of times to get the excess water out. He doesn’t need to do much to it, though, since the way he’d been sitting, the spray had mostly hit his folded legs and arms, missing the majority of his hair and leaving it to dry slightly on its own. He doesn’t know what that says about his sense of time. Probably something bleak.

He slips into his questionably clean change of underwear and pulls his sleep clothes back on with all the sluggishness of a blistering hangover. Bleary-eyed, he scoops up the discarded pair of boxers without really seeing them and makes sure not think too hard about the shame-riddled piece of fabric in his hand.

Yosuke is thankful the mirror is still streaky with moisture and the last dregs of remaining steam still clinging to the glass; it distorts the view of his reflection as he passes. He doesn’t want to see himself, doesn’t want to look himself in the eyes and see the weight of what he’s done etched into the rings of his irises, doesn’t want to acknowledge his own presence in this liminal space of a bathroom. All he wants is to forget any of this ever took place, to trudge back to bed and try to get what precious little sleep he still can before the light of reality reaches in through the windows and he’s forced to join the waking world. He keeps his eyes half focused as he shuffles over to the door and reaches the hand not full of wadded-up boxers out to twist the lock until it clicks open. The movement of his reflection catches at the side of his vision and for a moment he’s tempted to glance over.

He stops himself before he can.

With the door now unlocked, Yosuke lets go of the knob and reaches across himself towards the light switch with his free hand – the other hanging heavy as lead with his dirty boxers at his side. It’s an old habit by now, turning off the light before he opens the door. He’s learned the hard way over years of late night tip-toeing around his parents’ work schedules that flooding the darkened hallway with a sudden burst of brightness is a sure-fire way to let someone know he’s awake. Even now with his brain in a fog, muscle memory kicks in and Yosuke’s fingers instinctively seek out the little piece of plastic on the wall beside the door. He flicks it down and the room is plunged into claustrophobic dark.

He blinks against the sudden blindness as he waits for the nightlight to cut itself back on in the absence of light. He uses the faint orange glow to help him find the doorknob again, carefully turning it and pulling the door open as soundlessly as he can, peeking around the thin opening to scan the hall and listen for movement beyond his pocket of space. Nothing. Only the low hum of the refrigerator down in the kitchen below.

With a deep breath that his lungs don’t seem to register, Yosuke pulls the door open all the way – as if it had never been shut to begin with. The air in the hallway is actually warmer than it is in the bathroom; the cold of the water that had chilled the tile like an open window in winter hasn’t yet seeped out into the hall. It feels strange against Yosuke’s skin, his body still hypersensitive but numbed at the same time because of the freezing shower spray. Even through his sweatpants he can feel the difference in temperature.

(Maybe if he’s lucky he’ll catch a cold and get to call in sick to life.)

Yosuke lets a shiver or two pass through him before he starts the short trek back towards his room, making sure he’s steady enough to sneak the way he needs to. As he takes his first few steps out into the dark, just before the glow of the nightlight passes between him and the rest of the silent, sleeping house, Yosuke catches the flicker of movement from his reflection in the mirror. He keeps his eyes trained forward so he doesn’t have to watch his own walk of shame.

If there is a flash of distorted gold within the mirror’s depths or if his reflection’s movement seems out of sync with his own, like something just past the glass has turned to watch him as they both walk, then Yosuke staunchly ignores it. His mind has already betrayed him too many times tonight to bother looking for more.

            He climbs back into bed and eventually manages to fall into a thankfully dreamless sleep. It only lasts for two and a half hours.

  The morning comes in like a blow to the head.

It starts with Yosuke’s alarm blaring in his ear and startling him awake. He flails, forgetting where he is in his adrenaline-fueled stupor, and gets himself wrapped in the sheets for a minute until he can wrest an arm out and slap his hand down on top of the clock.

The peace and quiet lasts just long enough for Yosuke’s heart rhythm to start resembling something normal. Then, with all the untamed force of a comet, Teddie decides that he, too, would like to ruin everything and dive-bombs onto Yosuke’s bed with a long, drawn-out, “Good moooooooooorning, Yosuke!”

And thus the day begins.

Yosuke spends the next few minutes disentangling himself from the sentient plushie toy trying to hug him to death. It takes longer than it should. Teddie whines, of course, as he usually does when Yosuke baps him in the face with a pillow, but at least he has the decency this time to release his captive long enough for Yosuke to get out of the bed.

The next half hour or so is an exercise in patience as Yosuke maneuvers around in the pre-dawn dark in an attempt to get ready for school – digging out a clean shirt, searching for his uniform jacket with increasing frustration until finally remembering he’d left it downstairs – all while continuously tripping over the lanky, blond barnacle that has attached itself to his side. But, as exhausted as he is physically, and as much as Teddie grates on his nerves, Yosuke knows the reason it’s been ramped up to eleven this morning is because Teddie still feels pouty and dejected after Yosuke (in Teddie’s words) “a-bear-ndoned” him the day before. Not that he would ever say it out loud to him, but Yosuke does have to admit the guy has a pretty valid reason this time, even if the resulting “bear hugs” cause Yosuke to nearly fall on his face more than once. Eventually (though with much begrudged sighing), Yosuke gives up and lets his new brother-not-brother hang off him like some kind of deranged belt while he gathers up the textbooks he didn’t even open last night.

Next comes the process of actually leaving the room. Teddie makes it difficult to listen out the door for sounds of life downstairs, but after a few minutes of shushing, Yosuke is able to determine there is either no one else in the house (most likely), or one or both of his parents are still dead asleep (less likely). Yosuke takes the gamble and slides out into the hallway, silently praying he and Teddie are alone right now.

The hallway is where Yosuke’s anxiety decides it wants to come out and play.

For a second he’s fine; the bear acts as a decent distraction, what with his insistence on not being left alone for more than a moment, and Yosuke can focus his brain on trying to walk without falling over. It’s when he looks up and the door to the bathroom comes into view that the horrible, knotted dread in the pit of his stomach rears back up and makes itself known. Yosuke stumbles to a halt just before crossing through the doorway, leaving Teddie to nearly plow into him at the abrupt stop.

They’re gonna know, his treacherous mind sniggers at him. Your parents already know – there’s gonna be a note waiting for you on the kitchen counter when you go downstairs, or a text from your mom saying she wants to talk to you when you get home from school. There’s no way someone didn’t hear you last night…

Yosuke clamps his teeth down on his tongue so hard that he feels his molars slice through the side of it. There is a faint tang of metal in his mouth.

It’s fine, he tries to tell himself.

Is it? Is it really?

“Yosuke?” Teddie asks from behind him, voice muffled where he’d run face-first into Yosuke’s back. He shifts away but keeps his hands clutched in Yosuke’s uniform shirt and when he speaks again his voice is clearer. “Why’d you stop walking?”

Teddie’s gonna ask questions. He’s too naive to know right now but he’ll hear it from your parents and then he’ll ask about ‘scoring’ and won’t shut up until he knows.

“Yosuke, helloooooooo!”

And then he’ll tell everybody else.

“Yoooooosukeeeee!”

He’ll tell Souji.

Terror washes through him, cold and deep-seated like ice crystallizing in the marrow of his bones. There is a moment where he feels weightless, displaced, his stomach dropping out as he stares down from the edge of a towering precipice with no ground below him in sight. His breath catches in his mouth and hangs there in a frozen, aborted inhalation that never makes it down into his lungs.

Souji would hate him. From anyone else, Yosuke might be able to handle the looks of disgust and loathing; he’s grown pretty used to it already since moving to Inaba. Housewives and retired old men with nothing to do but scowl, classmates whose families blamed Junes for their own failing businesses and subsequently viewed him as its embodiment. He’s used to it. Members of the Investigation Team, too, sometimes, when he’s being particularly annoying – he’s caught a few of his friends share looks of aggravation before, after he’s said something he knows is stupid even as he says it. Especially in the beginning. They might not hate him the way that so many others in the town do, but he knows he pisses them off sometimes and it wouldn’t come as much of a shock were any one of them to suddenly decide he wasn’t worth it. A tiny, pessimistic part of him keeps expecting it, even. One day, it whispers. One day…

But Souji.

If Souji ever turned that kind of frigid, hateful gaze in his direction, if Souji ever spat words of vehemence to his face, behind his back, cursed his name as if he had the plague – or worse. If Souji ever looked at him with vacant eyes, with icy, empty apathy, glanced at him and saw only a waste of time and energy where friendship used to be, like Yosuke meant nothing to him…

You would break.

“YOSUKE!”

Yosuke yanks himself out of his thoughts with a physical jerk, nearly knocking back into Teddie right as the bear leans up to shout in his ear.

“Ted, hey!” he says, voice cracking and nearly loud enough to classify as a shout. He’s vaguely aware of the faint hysteria, the desperate edge of fear that colors his words, and he takes a step backwards, angling to the side a bit so that a perplexed Teddie is somewhat between him and the bathroom door. “Look, how about you go first and I’ll just go use the one downstairs, okay?” It’s okay, he tells himself; if the shower is still wet then he probably won’t even notice. The bathroom doesn’t smell like anything except soap. It’s okay. It’s okay. It’s okay…

He breathes in as deeply as he can without making it obvious. Holds it. Lets it out. All the while he focuses on keeping himself there in the hallway, present in his current reality at ass-o-clock in the morning with a clingy, long-limbed not-human suction cupped to his arm.

It’s okay, he repeats, and gradually his heart rate begins to slow.

Teddie, on the other hand, watches Yosuke silently, blond brows furrowed and lips pursed as if he’s trying to decipher Yosuke’s sudden shift in demeanor. He stays that way for a good minute or so as Yosuke gets a handle on his breathing, appraising Yosuke intensely with an expression that looks far too serious on such a young face.

Then, suddenly, as though someone has flipped a switch, his expression goes from fervent, focused confusion to a childish, almost comically melodramatic pout.

“But whyyyyyyyy?” he whines, long and loud, seemingly no longer concerned about Yosuke’s odd behavior. There is a hint of sulk in the bear’s voice, exactly like a kid that’s been denied something he wants and gets huffy when Mom tells him no. He frowns up at Yosuke with eyes that are clearly too wide and watery to be anything other than a ploy. “Teddie wants to go in together!”

Yosuke just blinks.

“…What.”

He opens his mouth to say something else, something that might better convey just how blindsided that comment has left him, but his entire body is running on next to no sleep and has had far too many bouts of anxiety to function properly at such an ungodly hour of the morning. All he can do for what seems like an embarrassingly long few seconds is work his jaw open and closed while his brain tries to come up with something coherent to say.

All that eventually comes out is a flat, “…I’m sorry, you want to do what?”

Teddie’s pout deepens. “Yosuke was going to go brush his teeth, right? This bear needs to brush his teeth, too, so I thought we could do it at the same time.” He tugs on Yosuke’s arm, leaning his weight back on his heels and holding on so that he can sway side-to-side, jostling a still-blank-screened Yosuke in the process. “Pleeeeeeease, Yosuke?” he begs, “Nana-chan said her friends Yoko and Tsukino are sisters and they do everything together, even brush their teeth, and Teddie wants to do that with his brother, too!”

That is… very much not what Yosuke was expecting.

“Brother?!” he sputters, brain finally kick-starting back to life a split-second too late behind his mouth. “Since when am I your brother?”

The abrupt shift from his earlier tide of panic to this leaves the space behind his eyes feeling pinched and tight; the culmination of too much weirdness and too little sleep. It isn’t that he hates the idea of being called “brother”, not really, and he’s pretty sure the both of them have been steadily heading towards this point for a while now – or, at least, the ever-increasing familiarity of having the bear around has grown into something he’d be hard pressed to feel normal without. But this is the first time it’s ever been acknowledged out loud, that Teddie himself has ever said anything of the sort, and to hear that he does, in fact, see Yosuke as family is… Well, not unwelcome, just thoroughly unexpected.

But Yosuke’s stumbling reaction must have come off as harsh and angry, rather than the shock that it actually is, because Teddie’s expression morphs from mopey and affronted to downright heartbroken right before Yosuke’s eyes. “Sensei and Nana-chan call each other ‘brother’ and ‘sister’…” he mumbles, voice timid and uncharacteristically sad. The faint sparkle of tears starts to gather in the corners of his eyes and suddenly Yosuke feels like a complete and total ass.

“Aw, Ted, no,” he says, and it sounds just a little nervous, just a little lost. He’s not used to comforting people – he’s not the person anyone usually seeks out for this kind of thing. More often than not, he’s the reason someone is upset in the first place.

He pats at Teddie’s head awkwardly. “C’mon, don’t do that.”

Not for the first time, Yosuke is reminded that Teddie really doesn’t have anybody outside of the Investigation Team and Nanako. Sure, Yosuke’s parents are letting the bear stay in their house, and his mom seems to have taken a bit of a shine to him and his eagerness to learn and help. But that’s not really the same as having friends or family. Teddie might have boundary issues (and even though it sucks, Yosuke can kind of forgive him for it because of how new Teddie is to the human world), but being constantly lonely and bored with nothing to do but study other people and wish you could have that level of connection is… Honestly, it sounds pretty awful.

Besides, Teddie idolizes Souji, looks up to him like a little kid would their childhood hero, and also utterly adores Nanako. It really shouldn’t have come as a surprise then, that the guy would eventually try and emulate their familial bond with the closest person to him, the one member of the group he actually lives with.

Yosuke stares down at Teddie’s watery little face and something in him shifts. Pity, he thinks at first, but that doesn’t seem right at all. It’s warmer than that, closer to the chest, and try as he might he can’t name it properly. Whatever it is, though, it fills the space from which Yosuke’s initial shock at being called “brother” out of nowhere is slowly starting to drain. The more he lets it sit, the easier it feels, the more natural – like putting a name to something that already existed, or like a stone in a foundation that was always there, just not quite in place until someone pressed in exactly the right spot.

He can’t even summon up the will to stay annoyed.

With a long, drawn out sigh, Yosuke puts a bit more pressure on Teddie’s hair and ruffles it beneath his palm. “You just surprised me, okay? You can…” He pauses, his mouth feeling funny, and glances away from the teary gaze angled up at him for a second before turning back, resigned – though not unhappy about it. “…You can call me that if you want, I guess.”

The rapid, complete reversal in Teddie’s mood is staggering, his dejected expression swiftly transforming into something blindingly bright and exuberant. “Just!” Yosuke starts, frantically cutting off whatever the bear is about to say. “Not where anyone else can hear you, alright?” Because really, it’s already hard enough trying to explain where Teddie came from to anyone that doesn’t know about the Midnight Channel; Yosuke doesn’t think he’d be able to come up with a new cover story if people start thinking he’s been hiding a secret younger sibling for the past year his family has been here. (And that’s not even counting the back bending he’d have to do if his parents overheard.)

Luckily Teddie doesn’t seem to mind this addendum at all, because suddenly there’s a scrawny pair of arms squeezing Yosuke’s middle like a ripe orange and Teddie is bawling into his shoulder for an entirely different reason. “OKAY!” he crows, thankfully muffled by Yosuke’s shirt.

Yosuke wheezes, teetering slightly as the hug knocks him off-balance. “Oh my god, Ted!” he croaks. It goes unheard.

The mascot-turned-humanoid peels his face up out of Yosuke’s side and grins at him with the brilliance of a flickering star, eyes still shining with happy tears. “I promise, Yosuke-nii! Teddie will be the best little bear-ther ever!”

Yosuke winces at the volume so close to his ears. “Okay,” he huffs, “alright, cool, awesome, just get off!” He paws at Teddie’s arms to try and dislodge them and alleviate the pressure from around his ribs. For someone made up of air and cotton roughly seventy-five percent of the time, Teddie has a surprisingly strong grip. “Seriously, Ted, that hurts.”

Teddie gives him one last tight squeeze before letting him go, and Yosuke damn near topples over at the sudden loss of bear propping him up. He shoots the little blond anomaly an unamused look that Teddie seems far too gleeful to notice. Or if he does, he pays it no attention whatsoever.

Teddie twirls past Yosuke and into the bathroom, snagging Yosuke’s sleeve as he goes and tugging on it with a grin that could cause tooth decay. “Come on, come on! You’re gonna be late again!” he calls, sing-songing like it’s the most typical morning in all the waking world.

Yosuke stands there in the doorway for a moment longer, watching as Teddie grabs a nearby washcloth and douses it under the sink faucet before slapping it over his face with a resounding, soggy ‘smack!” Yosuke stifles a laugh.

Maybe he should be more put out, Yosuke thinks with just a hint of fondness, but he’d be lying if he said he wasn’t even a teensy bit glad to have the damn bear around sometimes, despite how rambunctious he can be. He finds it especially true in the moments of deafening quiet, when the household’s collective schedules refuse to line up and Yosuke is left on his own with a mind that likes to eat itself. He understands “lonely”, he understands “sad”, and if his first-ever encounter with Jirya is anything to go by, he more than understands that bored, restless feeling that comes with being alone.

“Yosuke-nii?” Teddie calls again, testing out the new moniker with obvious glee.

Shaking his head, Yosuke lets out a long, overdramatic noise from the back of his throat and rolls his eyes to hide the tiny, warm smile that threatens to lift at the corner of his mouth. “Alright, fine!” he grouses, though there’s no real heat behind it. “Just don’t hog the sink.”

He moves to follow after his unofficial sibling, hesitating for only a moment just inside the bathroom door before sucking in a steadying breath through his nose and stepping the rest of the way inside. Teddie once again doesn’t notice – nor does he even so much as glance at the shower, much to Yosuke’s relief. Instead, the bear gets to work making a mess of the counter as he squirts far too much toothpaste over the bristles of his cartoon-bear-covered yellow and blue toothbrush. Yosuke, for his part, simply lets out a quiet, “ug, gross,” and pretends to shove Teddie out of the way as he reaches for his own toothbrush. He has to keep up appearances, after all.

And hey, he’s always secretly kind of wanted a little brother.

As they both settle in to what remains of their morning prep, (with Teddie absolutely hogging the sink) Yosuke finds he feels a weird sense of calm. It sinks into his skin like an ointment, smoothing over the last jagged dregs of his anxiety from before and effectively shielding his mind from thoughts of shame and vivid dreams.

The wariness still lingers slightly; he can feel it humming like a distant storm if he thinks about it too hard for just a second too long. It’s seeped around the edges like a stain and colors the new, easier atmosphere with the faintest hint of dingy yellow. To make sure it doesn’t spread, Yosuke unconsciously keeps himself close to the doorway with Teddie between him and the shower. He doesn’t look over at it, only lets it glint in the corner of his eye whenever he turns to jostle Teddie with his elbow or give him a look for trying to speak with a mouth full of toothpaste. Every time he catches sight of the white tile just beyond his boisterous little brother’s head, Yosuke instinctively keeps his vision blurry and turns back towards the sink.

 ---

 The stain begins to bleed further in the longer the morning goes on.

It starts out okay. Teddie talks Yosuke’s ear off like the endless vat of energy that he is, reveling in his newfound status as an unofficially-official member of the family and effectively keeping Yosuke’s nerves at bay as they finish up in the bathroom. Nothing else of note takes place.

There is a fleeting moment as they make their way downstairs where Yosuke remembers his earlier fear of finding an irate parent waiting to confront him, but the moment he touches down on the final stair and finds the rest of the house dark and empty, the vice around his lungs eases away. There is no surprise altercation; no one jumps out from around a corner to call Yosuke out for his late-night bathing habits. There isn’t even so much as a post-it from his mother stuck to the fridge like he’d been so convinced there would be not twenty minutes before. No one knows, he tells his anxious mind, breathing out the last of the stiffness in his limbs.

Yosuke switches on the lights and helps Teddie rifle around in the kitchen for something that can function as breakfast. Their search is decently fruitful, if a bit lackluster, but given that neither of them are much good at anything requiring more commitment than a microwave, it’s really not too bad. By the time Teddie shoves him out the door with one last bone-breaking hug and a joyous, “Bye, Yosuke-niiiiiiiiiiii!!” they are both at least fed.

The first part of the walk goes pretty smoothly as well. Yosuke plugs in his headphones and fires up the new album he’d downloaded over the weekend but never got a chance to listen to. He walks in time to the beat, still feeling the warmth in his chest from earlier, and makes the mistake of letting himself believe that maybe today won’t be so bad after all.

Then he gets to the spot where he and Souji usually wait for one another.

He’s already slowing to a stop as he approaches, hands reaching up out of habit to tug the headphones away from his ears and eyes automatically scanning the area for a head of familiar silver hair. It doesn’t register at first what he’s doing – every action born from muscle memory after weeks and months of the same damn thing; it’s only as he’s pulling his phone out of his pocket to check the time that he remembers.

He remembers that Souji still hasn’t texted him back after vanishing and scaring Yosuke half to death. He remembers that Souji wasn’t in school yesterday, that Naoto had acted as his mouthpiece and spouted some story about Souji being sick that just didn’t add up no matter how much Yosuke tried to work it out. He remembers the worry, the fear, the helplessness of not being able to do anything to help or even locate his best friend, followed by the hurt and frustration and the bitter, niggling anxiety in the back of his skull over the course of the past couple of days.

He remembers that he’d been upset with Souji for not trusting him enough to tell him what was wrong. He’d felt a little betrayed, angry even, though he hadn’t exactly wanted to acknowledge either emotion because he didn’t want to think about what it said about him. He remembers feeling guilty because of it, anxious and paranoid that he was overreacting but also too sure that Souji had been acting out of character to take any kind of self-depreciating comfort in the thought. He feels his gut turn.

What if Souji wasn’t in school again today? What if Naoto had been wrong or only placating them when they’d said Souji would probably be back? What if something really was super wrong, and his partner had just decided to shut him out without giving Yosuke a chance to help? Or what if Souji had just decided he didn’t want to deal with anyone anymore – didn’t want to deal with him.

Yosuke shakes his head, careful not to accidentally throw himself off-balance and step into the street. He can’t let himself think like that; it’s unfair to Souji and to Naoto and, well, probably just about everybody on the team to think that Souji suddenly just hates someone (him) or is leaving them all in the dark on purpose, picking out favorites because he doesn’t trust. That’s not who Souji is, it never has been in all the time that Yosuke has known him. Even with the anxiety, Yosuke at least is confident that his partner isn’t secretly a horrible, manipulative person at heart. After all, Souji has seen the worst parts of all of them and never so much as flinched.

So no, if Souji isn’t at school again today then that means something really is wrong, and shame on Yosuke for making it all about himself and his insecurities.

Mood soured and self-dislike rearing its ugly head once more, Yosuke stuffs his phone back into his pocket and tugs the headphones up to try and drown out the darkening thoughts. But it doesn’t work. He cranks the volume up, almost loud enough to hurt his ears, but no matter how loud he makes it there is still the tiny, mocking voice at the base of his skull that whispers just above the music and gnaws incessantly at his nerves.

You’re a terrible partner, it whispers. Look at you, always trying to play the victim. You can’t even be worried about your best friend without turning it into a pity party, can you?

He turns the music up higher, crossing his arms tightly over his chest and hunching inward as if he can somehow make himself small enough to hide from his own mind.

You’re just going to ruin everything like you always do. You push and you whine until nobody can stand you anymore. That’s why Souji isn’t speaking to you.

Shaky, anxious energy tingles its way down Yosuke’s legs, settles in his bones like a live current through a power line.

Maybe it’ll be a good thing if he doesn’t show up to school – you really want him to see your shitty self-absorption? Cuz he will. You know he will; it’s Souji, nothing gets past him. He’ll take one look at you and he’ll know.

Yosuke lurches forward like he’s been shoved, cramming his hands into his pockets and hurrying away from the meet-up spot without even a final glance around to see if his partner is nearby. A part of him hopes that Souji isn’t, that he’s already gone on ahead without waiting for Yosuke, or that he’s still somewhere far off behind, not yet close to where the pair of them usually meet.

He strides off in the direction of the high school as quickly as he can without actually breaking into a sprint and keeps his head bowed as if he can out-pace the anxiety and leave the voice behind.

  It’s almost a relief when Yosuke walks into the classroom and sees the desk in front of his own still as empty as his inbox.

He slides in through the door much earlier than he’d expected – a testament to just how fast he’d been power-walking the entire second half of his trek. It isn’t too early, a good two thirds of his classmates seem to be already in the room, but it’s early enough that he’s almost thrown off by how much he doesn’t have to scramble to his seat to beat the bell.

Chie and Yukiko greet him as he sits, Yukiko with a polite nod and quiet, “Good morning, Yosuke-kun,” and Chie with a quip about him not being late for once. He pretends to feel more indignant than he really is and shoots her a half-hearted retort. To Yukiko, he raises a hand in a lackluster wave and mumbles out something that hopefully passes as cheery. If the girls glance at one another after he turns to sling his bag off his shoulder then he pays it no mind. He can play it off as being tired if either of them ask.

They don’t. The odd looks last for a few moments more before the girls return to their previous discussion, seemingly from where they left off. Yosuke busies himself with unpacking his school bag and largely tunes them out.

More students file in. The clock above the door continues to tick, minute hand sluggishly moving ever closer to the start of class. Souji doesn’t show. The door opens and closes several more times and a handful of people enter while a few more leave – likely visiting their friends from another classroom. Souji still doesn’t show. Eventually, the students milling around the edges of the room start to find their seats and the noise in the hallway begins to die down a little as surrounding classes do the same. Souji still doesn’t show. Chie says more words to Yosuke and he responds when prompted, but he’s too busy pretending not to watch the door to ever fully join in on the conversation. And Souji. Doesn’t. Show.

A strange mix of relief and dread starts to form in Yosuke’s gut. There isn’t much time left before the teacher is due to arrive, and while the sarcastic, scornful voice that followed him from the meet-up point has thankfully quieted down now that Yosuke has the classroom as a distraction, the tempest of negativity still remains. Guilty as he feels for admitting it, he’s glad that Souji isn’t currently here; Yosuke is still a mess of conflicting emotions from the past couple of days – let alone this morning – and he has no idea how he’d handle actually seeing his partner in person. On the other hand, as the minutes eek by and it looks increasingly likely that no other students will be coming in, Yosuke’s concern for his best friend’s wellbeing swells like a rising tide, threatening to spill over and send him sinking once again. Guilt for his relief wars with the apprehension in his heart, leaving him balanced on he edge of something he cannot see the bottom of.

It’s like being lost without even a single star to guide him home.

He’s so busy focusing on his own inner turmoil that Yosuke almost misses the sound of the door opening, almost misses the quiet, moon-colored figure that slips into the room like a spectre until they’re silently easing into the chair directly in front of him. Yosuke startles as the figure turns in their seat to offer a nod to Chie and Yukiko, then back around to give him one as well.

Souji.

Souji is back in school today.

And he looks like absolute hell.

It’s the little things about him, the chips and cracks that Yosuke can see all over his partner’s finely-crafted mask of normalcy. There is a careful tension in the way he holds himself, a tightness to the line of his shoulders that speaks of carefully controlled anxiety, of exhaustion hidden down deep below the surface. Yosuke knows, he can see this and recognize it because now he knows what to look for. Up close he can see the remnants of dark circles below Souji’s eyes, faint and faded, just a hint of purple below tissue paper skin. It’s the same thing Yosuke sees on himself in the mirror after a too-long shift at work for the second day in a row.

He scans Souji’s features as the other boy smiles at the three of them. The tit of Souji’s lips is all wrong; the smile is pulled too far out along the corners and not upward like it should be if it were really real. It doesn’t reach his eyes, either, and seems to tremble the longer it stays on. His skin also looks ashen around the corners – a subtle sign of sleep deprivation that Yosuke knows all too well.

(He can’t remember ever noticing his partner looking this way before. He’s ashamed to admit that he doesn’t know if that’s because Souji’s just never looked this bad or if Yosuke’s just never looked.)

Yosuke thinks of all the times he’s been running on empty and feeling like he wants to drop, but can’t because there’s still several hours left of his shift and he has to pretend he’s perfectly fine. It’s always then that the stern, gossipy, angry old women decide to come up to him, to crowd him into a corner and make demands he cannot fulfill or intimidate him just because they think they can. Yosuke knows what it feels like to have to hold his Customer Service smile in place and keep a tight reign on his positive façade – just so they don’t pick up on his exhaustion and desperation to just go home and exploit the weakness as if it were blood in the water.

That’s what Souji looks like to him.

As horrible as it is, Yosuke has the pageant to thank for being able to notice the way his best friend is miles away from okay. Granted, he looks a fuck ton better than he did the day he went sprinting past Yosuke in the hallway, eyes wild and panicked. But that’s exactly why Yosuke can see what he sees now; because now that he’s caught of glimpse of what Souji looks like when his usual stoicism and quiet solidity are fractured, Yosuke doesn’t think he’ll ever be able to not notice it again.

Souji turns slightly at the waist to aim his surface-level smile in Yosuke’s direction, having just finished showing it to Yukiko and Chie. Yosuke catches the way Souji’s eyes seem to linger on him – just for a second – and Yosuke tries to meet them, hold them, in the hopes of finding some kind of genuine emotion hidden inside, but Souji flicks his gaze down just slightly, before turning away and facing the front of the room.

The teacher walks in a moment later and any chance of getting Souji’s attention again is lost for the rest of the morning.

 ---

           The rest of the day is a complete and total disaster.

Yosuke barely gets a chance to talk to Souji during lunch, and for the little bit he does, Souji essentially says the exact same thing that Naoto had said the day before. Under normal circumstances this might not have raised any flags in Yosuke’s head, but the way that Souji “explains” the events of the last couple of days seems more like he’s building off of something rather than recounting it. Once again there’s an odd disconnect with the timeline.

But Yosuke doesn’t know how to call him on it. He keeps his eyes trained on his best friend’s face, scrutinizing Souji’s expression as if he can pick out the missing information from the way Souji doesn’t quite meet anyone’s eyes. There is a strange fluttering in his stomach as he watches – one that gets stronger every time he notices yet another minute detail that speaks of just how not-right his partner is below the surface.

It isn’t even that Souji looks like he’s been horribly sick, which, again, Yosuke doesn’t wish for but would at least lend credit to the story that both Naoto and Souji have given. He does look very much like he hasn’t slept properly, so that part at least is obviously true, but to say that physical illness is the reason for everything is just… it doesn’t fit. No, instead there is a sort of quiet jitteriness to Souji’s entire being; one that screams of trepidation, like Souji is afraid of something as he speaks. He’s also keeping things purposefully vague– not so much that it’s obvious, but Yosuke has acted as Souji’s second for far too long now not to be able to spot the discrepancies in his partner’s patterns. He’s spent months being hyper-tuned to Souji as their commander; he’s a little miffed at himself for never thinking to use that same skill outside the TV until now.

Yukiko is the one that brings up how sudden Souji’s disappearance had been. Souji’s poker face twitches just barely, but it’s enough that Yosuke, close as he is, can spot the split-second ripple on the mirror-smooth expression Souji’s holding in place. Chie picks up the thread that Yukiko began and carries it with a nod of agreement, throwing in a statement of her own.

Yosuke grabs at the end of the conversation thread, seizing his chance and hastening to remind the other boy of how he’d witnessed him tearing down the hallway before Souji can even so much as open his mouth to respond. He purses his lips and stares at Souji as if he can make his friend meet his eyes by sheer force of will. “Seriously, bro,” he adds, silently praying he can call his partner out and have it work. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you move that fast.”

Souji flicks his focus over, more like an unconscious tic than anything deliberate, and for the tiniest of moments his gaze connects with Yosuke’s before Souji’s cloud-grey eyes flick away again and back to the space just behind Yosuke’s right shoulder. It’s faster than a well-aimed Zio, but not quite fast enough for Yosuke to completely miss the flash of rabbit-like fear that’s hiding just behind Souji’s manufactured expression. The sight of it twists in Yosuke’s chest like a sewing bobbin wound nearly tight enough to snap.

Look at me, he thinks, desperate with rekindled anger and hurt. Talk to me, damnit, I was worried about you!

But he doesn’t say it out loud. He can’t, because he doesn’t know how – doesn’t know how to call his friend out for giving half-truths at best, doesn’t know how to ask Souji outright what’s going on. He’s terrified, both of making a nuisance of himself like he did with Saki-senpai and also of Souji pulling away from him and never telling him why. If Souji needs him, then Yosuke wants to help. But that means, too, that Souji needs to need him.

Because which is worse: being an annoyance or simply not being needed?

He quickly stomps that question down and grits his teeth against it.

Something desperate and frustrated claws its way up Yosuke’s throat in retaliation, and before Yosuke can stop himself he’s biting back an accusation, masking it at the last moment by making a joke at Kanji’s expense. It scalds him as he says it, like a swallow of too-hot water, but say it he does. He doesn’t even know why, it just… comes out; like a knee-jerk reaction to the feeling of being attacked, even if it’s by his own mind and not by any external force.

Souji’s expression turns to stone.

From that point on the discussion steadily decays. Chie smacks at Yosuke and Souji takes the chance to quickly throw up a wall. He deflects, changing his expression as if he’s swapping a Persona in battle, apologizing and smiling his fake, shaky smile and decidedly not giving any straight answers. The conversation winds around like a river until the details of the beauty pageant make their way to the front, where Yosuke, in his embarrassment and blind mess of confusing emotions, manages to trip headlong into his own stupidity.

Chie smacks at him again while Yukiko hisses something low and threatening that he probably deserves, and by the time Yosuke is able to fend them off, Souji has already made his escape. Yosuke slumps back into his seat, defeated and upset. There’s no point in going after his partner, he knows, because Souji has already proven his ability to vanish without a trace.

With his scalp still stinging from Chie’s knuckles, Yosuke sinks lower in his chair and folds his arms tightly over his chest as he sulks, teeth grinding as he attempts to tune out the girls’ indignation. He allows the acrid disappointment and dejection to fester – he’s sick of trying to reel it back in at this point, considering he’s still running on only a couple of hours of sleep. Chie and Yukiko finally turn away from him and Yosuke stares at the blackboard without seeing it until his vision starts to blur.

  Souji does eventually come back, of course, once lunch ends, but by then Yosuke is too embittered to care. He sits behind his partner (though he’s questioning if it can really be called an equal partnership right about now) and stares at the back of Souji’s head like it’s personally done him wrong. It’s how he feels at the moment, anyway.

Under usual circumstances, Yosuke would be a ball of erratic energy – finding ways to poke and prod at Souji to get his attention. Because Yosuke is needy, he knows he’s needy, and Souji is the best friend he’s ever had, so it just makes sense that Yosuke would want his attention all the time. He doesn’t like how needy he is (it’s cost him friendships before), but he’s stopped trying to deny or fight it. He’s seen first hand what the outcome of that can be.

But today he doesn’t do any of that. He can’t even bring himself to slip his friend a note, just to pass the time; he’s still too upset. It’s probably just paranoia, the product of anxiety and too many bad experiences with people throwing him away, and he’s aware that his reaction is most likely childish. Pettiness runs in his nature, though, when he’s hurt, and it’s just one more thing that Yosuke has come to terms with but cannot disengage from entirely. Something else he doesn’t like about himself – surprise, surprise.

Classes start and classes end and Yosuke’s mind wanders into dark places. He would try and nap, maybe, since he’s more worn out than he thinks he’s ever been outside from fighting in the TV world. However, though his body protests the lack of sleep, his mind keeps circling. So Yosuke sits and thinks, switching between being irritated with Souji for shutting him out – even if his partner really is just recovering from a messed-up stomach – to being hurt all over again to blaming himself. What did he do so wrong that Souji ignored him for two days straight? Does Souji just not trust him anymore? Did he ever?

And oh, that last one stings.

Yosuke’s emotions swing back around to frustration then; if Yosuke really did screw up somewhere, then how the hell is he supposed to know what not to do if Souji won’t talk to him? If Souji doesn’t trust him, if Souji never did, then what the actual fuck? Just… what the fuck?! No matter what way Yosuke turns this situation over in his mind he can’t seem to untangle any of it. He doesn’t know if he should apologize for something or if he should be expecting another apology from Souji. By the time there’s only half an hour left of school Yosuke is damn near ready to grab his partner by the shoulders and shake him, or corner Souji so that he can’t run away again, pin him to a wall and press in close until Souji’s has nowhere to focus his eyes except for him.

He lets himself picture it, plays the imaginary confrontation out like a movie in his head. He could grab Souji as he’s getting ready to leave and drag his partner back into the classroom after all the other students file out. Or better yet, he could trap Souji in an empty bathroom stall, maybe, could catch him as he’s passing by and push the other boy backwards so that Souji can’t duck around him to escape. Yosuke could slam his hands against the wall on either side of Souji’s waist, keep him there between his arms, press a knee between his partner’s legs, lean in to drag his teeth along the sensitive skin of Souji’s throat—

FUCK.

Yosuke startles so badly that he nearly jerks back in his seat. He just barely avoids bashing his ankle into the leg of Souji’s chair on accident, yanking his foot to the side last second and smacking his shin on his own desk instead as images from last night come roaring back into his head like a tsunami. Souji pinned beneath him. Souji with his breath gasping and his cheeks flushed red. Souji staring up at Yosuke with foggy, half-lidded eyes.

Yosuke feels the awful telltale rush of warmth as the blood in his body tries to migrate down.

You jerked off to the thought of your best friend last night in the shower, sing-songs the gnashing, sarcastic voice from the depths of his mind, mocking him as he tries to subtly squeeze his thighs together to discourage his traitorous dick. He grits his teeth in desperation, guilt and fear and self-disgust roiling low in his stomach, and silently prays for class to somehow end early.

Souji twitches in front of him, no doubt having heard the muffled ‘thud’ from where Yosuke had bashed his leg, and shifts like he’s going to turn over his shoulder to glance back Yosuke’s way.

A bubbling wave of panic rises up inside Yosuke’s chest, sending his already-fluttering heart into overdrive. The voice inside his head hisses, whispering anxious, frantic things like, he knows what you did, he knows what you just thought, he knows! all layered over top of one another like ripples in the rain. Yosuke feels his blood freeze, all the heat in his body not currently in his lap now rushing to his face in sheer mortification and dread.

Don’t look at me, please don’t look at me!

He isn’t sure if he’s more afraid of the other boy seeing right through him or of his own reaction at the sight of Souji’s face; he doesn’t trust his mind right now not to overlay the Souji from last night’s dream across the one in front of him. In the back of his head he shamefully wonders if it’s possible to be terrified and turned on at the same time. He squeezes his thighs tighter together and tries to circumvent his body’s attempts to find out.

As if some divine entity has heard him, the teacher turns around from writing on the chalkboard right as Souji is twisting his spine to look back in Yosuke’s direction, effectively halting Souji’s movement and leaving him to hurriedly realign himself facing forward. Yosuke lets out a quiet sigh of relief and slumps down in his chair once more. He ignores the sidelong glance that Chie sends his way and concentrates on slowing his heartbeat to a more reasonable level, hoping the flow of blood redirects itself as the steady pounding of his pulse sluggishly decelerates.

That was fucking close.

Yosuke’s jaw hurts from how he’s been clenching it by the time the warmth finally returns to his fingers. They shake with unspent adrenaline as he waits for the teacher to turn back around, discreetly grabbing his things and shoving them into his bag the moment her gaze is turned. As soon as the final bell sounds, right as Souji is twisting around again and offering him that bright, tired smile, Yosuke is on his feet and swinging his bag over his shoulder. He blurts out a quick goodbye and an “I’m glad you’re better, dude!” before dashing out the door like he’s running several years behind schedule, pants still feeling just barely too tight for the speed with which he walks.

He tells himself he’s just imagining the way the faint light in Souji’s face seems to dim as Yosuke all but jogs out into the safety of the hall.

 ---

 Yosuke’s shift that night at Junes is only made survivable because of Teddie.

The living mascot is still riding the emotional high from that morning and takes happy advantage of every moment that their paths seem to cross while Yosuke works the grocery department and Teddie the one just beyond. Every free moment he has, he’s gluing himself to Yosuke’s side, which Yosuke would be lying if he said he wasn’t secretly happy about. As annoying as his new little brother can be, it’s nice to feel needed, wanted, especially now, and Yosuke is thankful for the (very successful) distraction Teddie’s ravenous desire for his attention provides. They wind up getting a few odd looks here and there but his dad never comes by to see what the ruckus is about, so for once, Yosuke is able to force himself not to notice the hardened gazes thrown his way.            

The problem is, Teddie can’t be around him the entire time he’s there – even with the bear sneaking over to the canned goods aisle every chance he gets. After all, Teddie doesn’t go to school and thus has been on shift for a lot longer than Yosuke has. Stall as he might, eventually the kid is required (and deserves) to go on his dinner break, leaving Yosuke all alone with his thoughts. Even worse, it’s the part of the night that has a short lull in activity – the hour or so in between when people get off work and when they actually go out to start shopping for ingredients for dinner – so there aren’t even really any customers to deal with to keep Yosuke’s mind from edging off into dangerously dark territory. It makes him anxious all over again; even a testy old housewife or disgruntled off-duty cop would be preferable to being left alone.            

Because it’s when Yosuke is alone that the voice returns to his mind and whispers seeds of doubt and condescension into his ears.

Dirty, it sneers while he’s rearranging a stack of cans from this week’s “featured brand.”

Disgusting, it hisses and nearly makes him drop an entire armload onto his own foot.

Pervert, it mocks as he gives up and shoves everything he’d been holding onto the first shelf he can find.

Every time it speaks it gets harsher, more insistent, angrier, until it becomes nigh on impossible to focus on anything else. It’s everything he’s ever been afraid of himself becoming – other than the needy, clingy mess he already acknowledges he is – and it rattles around in his skull, getting louder and louder as the minutes tick by with nothing to occupy his thoughts beyond his own quagmire of self depreciation. He can feel it weighing heavily across his shoulders like a blanket made of stones, settling into his stomach and solidifying as if he’d swallowed cement.

It starts off quietly, too, almost so much that he doesn’t spot it at first, not until it’s too late to head it off. The guilt trickles in like an infection, like a seeping sickness, and by the time Yosuke has noticed its presence it’s brought along the doubt, the fear, the feeling of something grimy stuck to Yosuke’s skin like a thick layer of mud. It colors his vision, tugs at his Customer Service smile until it’s only held in place by sheer muscle memory, even as Yosuke’s insides start to burn and it nearly topples him over with the force of its reveal. He tries to push it aside, tries to ignore it or make it go away; it hangs on with poisoned claws and digs them deeper every time he thinks he’s managed to start to pull them out.

Remember what you did? the voice cackles over and over again. Remember how you enjoyed it?

And in the moments of silence when no one is nearby to keep him out of his own head, Yosuke does.

He thinks about all the sensations the dream had brought along with it, the ones that had stayed with him in the shower long after he’d woken up. He thinks about how good they had been, how he’d come to with the feel of Souji’s hair between his fingers, Souji’s lips against his own – not just the sex but the little things surrounding it as well. He thinks and thinks and thinks and then thinks again about how he’d been in class earlier that very day and wanted nothing more than to lean forward and press his face against the back of his partner’s shoulder.

He’d wanted to kiss Souji.

Yosuke ducks around the side of an aisle and leans against it for support as he lets the careening train of through go crashing through his head. The track behind it blazes bright and turns to ash.

GOD.

Yosuke runs his hands down his face.

He’d had a sex dream about his best friend. He’d orgasmed to the thought of his best friend. And not only that, but he’d actively been unable to think about anything else – even thinking of nothing hadn’t helped.

He feels his breathing start to quicken, catching in his chest at the end of each jerky inhale. Is he broken? Is there something horribly wrong with him that he can’t even get off to the thought of girls anymore? Is he just so irreparably desperate for Souji’s attention that he’d somehow cracked himself the moment his partner had stopped talking to him for a few days?

And even besides the fact that it was Souji that Yosuke had been picturing, that it was his closest companion and a guy, there is still another, almost more pressing concern that Yosuke finds himself circling around to now that the initial disgust and self-loathing has made itself apparent.

What does any of that say about him personally? What if it was just some weird fixation with the one person he’s ever felt this close to? Some need to be relevant? Is it even actually Souji that Yosuke’s brain has apparently latched onto now, or is it simply the ever-present yearning for someone, anyone to want him around that had placed his partner’s face, his voice, his body over top Yosuke’s pathetic need for validation? Saki-senpai’s echoing, shadowy voice had described Yosuke as a stray puppy once, months ago in the dark and twisted nether-world version of the Konishi family liquor store. He doesn’t want to admit it, but he knows she was probably right.

He does, after all, have a bit of an unfortunate track record with letting people use him.

Souji is kind to him. Souji is always there for him, always makes time for him; is it too far a stretch to think that maybe Yosuke is addicted to being treated like an actual person? That everything that’s happened in the last 24 hours is the product of Yosuke simply enjoying the attention and getting freaked when it’s suddenly taken away for even a moment? Maybe Yosuke really is like a whining dog, attaching himself to the first person to give him any sort of positive attention and getting under their feet, regardless of who the person is.

Maybe it’s Yosuke that now thinks of Souji as something to use, like everyone in the city used to do to him.

(And oh god, does he have to lean the rest of his weights against the endcap to keep himself standing when that particular thought crops up and knocks the wind clean out of his lungs. He thinks for a moment that he might even be physically sick.)

From that point forward, the rest of the night is left in shambles. Teddie’s break stretches on impractically long and Yosuke’s mind chews away at itself, sending him into an abyss of negativity while he turns everything over in his head until his head feels dizzy and his stomach feels nauseous.

Pathetic.

You’re so pathetic.

You can’t even pick apart what you’re repressing so that you can stop repressing it. What the fuck is wrong with you?

(He doesn’t have an answer. He doesn’t have any answers.)

You’re gonna wind up friendless again. You’re gonna scare him away and he’s going to hate you forever. After everything you’ve said about Kanji, now you’ve gone and done the same fucking thing you’re so goddamn worried some other guy is gonna try and do to you.

You hypocrite.

You sicko.

You dirty fucking homo.

Yosuke has to run to take a ten-minute break of his own, locking himself in the storeroom with wet-hot blurring vision until the bile in his throat stops burning at the backs of his teeth.

  He doesn’t sleep much again that night either. He’s too afraid of the dreams returning to properly rest, but too emotionally wrung out and exhausted to do anything other than lay there and stare up at the ceiling until his alarm goes off for school.

  Yosuke avoids Souji completely after that.

Wednesday is almost worse than Tuesday had been, because now that Yosuke knows Souji is back at school he has to actively take measures to evade him. He makes it a point not to go anywhere near the spot along the road where he and Souji would normally catch up to one another and walk the rest of the way. He can’t risk it, can’t give the voice in his head a new chance to spew its venom into his brain cells. So instead, he cranks up his music until his ears are ringing and wills his legs to move faster, ducking into a side street and taking an alternate path to school. Just in case the focus of his mental torment is anywhere nearby.

Because even as bad as the voice is, Yosuke just… He can’t face Souji.

It isn’t that he doesn’t want to see him (he really does, he’d missed his partner while Souji had been absent and unresponsive), but every time he thinks of his friend the images in his mind come filtering back in, tinting his thoughts with increasingly vivid scenarios. It’s almost like a floodgate has been opened, one that Yosuke not only doesn’t know how to close but also didn’t even know was there until it had all come crashing down. It’s almost unbearable.

So no. He can’t face Souji. Not yet. Not right now.

Not until he’s pieced himself back together and there’s nothing left for Souji to know and hate him for.

Yosuke hangs back at the school gates when he reaches them, picking his way carefully around the side of the front walkway to minimize his visibility just in case Souji is still inside by the shoe lockers. Only once he’s certain enough time has passed does Yosuke actually enter the building. He switches out his shoes as fast as he can and darts to the very end of the hall to the far staircase – the one he knows Souji is less likely to use while heading up for class – where he then loiters in the darkened corner of the stairwell, peeking around the side of the hall like he’s back on the stakeout with Chie all those months ago. He stays there, hiding, not even bothering to acknowledge the people around him as they pass him by, until he finally catches sight of that signature ethereal silver disappearing into the classroom. The crowd surges, then thins, then becomes a trickle, and all the while Yosuke remains in the safety of the hallway, only leaving his place in the stairwell when the final bell is about to sound and he has absolutely no other choice.

He slips into the classroom from the door in the back and tries to move as stealthily as he can to avoid alerting the boy in the desk in front of his own to his presence. He sits, shoots Yukiko and Chie a robotic nod in greeting, and for the rest of the time before the lunch break, he stares longingly at the back of Souji’s head and avidly pretends he doesn’t see the other boy glancing at him whenever the teacher isn’t looking directly their way.

He bolts for the bathroom the moment the lunch bell rings.

He doesn’t have a shift that night but he says he does anyway. He lies straight to Souji’s face (well, not straight to his face, Yosuke babbles it out as he’s shoving his notebook into his bag and blatantly avoiding looking at his best friend’s crumbling expression,) before heading out the door so fast he nearly stumbles. He can hear a couple of short, indignant noises from behind him – likely Chie – but he doesn’t so much as look.

He goes home and locks himself in his room, piling up under every cover he owns and cranking the volume on his headphones up as high as it will go.

He falls asleep anyway.

He dreams again – though nowhere as graphically as before. It’s muted somehow, less like he’s dreaming and more like his brain is simply cycling through all the thoughts Yosuke has been unable to drive away for the past couple of days. He still wakes up hard, gasping, frantic in his embarrassment and his confusion, kicking off the sheets and leaning back against the headboard until his heart stops trying to burst out through his chest. He’s still shaky, still guilty, still fucked up over how much he wishes it actually had been more graphic.

He doesn’t dare go down the mental rabbit hole of trying to suss out what all of that actually says about him.

There is a faint buzz from the nightstand beside him and he forces himself to move, to tug the headphones from his ears – the player long since drained of battery after running for several continuous hours – and shove them out of his way along the mattress. He rolls over to make a grab for where his phone sits blinking at him, his eyes still adjusting to the dim light in the room around him. (It takes him a good minute to realize that the sun has gone down outside his window, leaving the room only just barely lit with the fading blue-and-golden glow on the horizon.)

Yosuke nearly drops the phone twice before he finally manages to get a decent grip on it, his fingers still trembling from the adrenaline rush he’d suffered upon waking. With his body not obeying him and his mind still halfway lost in fleeting visions of his best friend’s skin, Yosuke has to stare at the device in his hand for several long seconds before he can make out the words scrolling across the screen.

8 missed messages.

All from Chie.

 Meat-Fu: Hey you jerk u didn’t even say goodbye! Rude!

Meat-Fu: What gives anyway? Thought u’d b all over Souji-kun by now.

Meat-Fu: Is something going on? Did u 2 fight?

Meat-Fu: Just went by Junes & guess what? Teddie said u don’t work 2night.

Meat-Fu: U wanna explain that 1? Y’d u lie?

Meat-Fu: Yosuke? U better read these or I’ll kick ur ass.

Meat-Fu: U’ve been acting rlly weird. R u ok?

 Yosuke groans and covers his eyes with his forearm. He doesn’t have the mental capacity to deal with this just yet. Quickly tapping at the keyboard, he types out a short, noncommittal deflection in the hopes of heading off any more incoming headache she might send his way. Chie is persistent, he knows, and if he doesn’t give her at least some kind of response then she might just come and kick down his front door. He has no desire to explain that to his parents.

 Yosuke: lol geez chie take it ez

Yosuke: I goofed n got the days wrong thats all

 He doesn’t get an immediate reply (for which he is very grateful), but the anxiety starts to creep in low in his lungs anyway. There is still adrenaline in his blood from the… everything, so the jittery, unsteady buzzing under his skin is still somewhat present even now. It adds on to the newer trickle of dread and brings it out just a little stronger.

He doesn’t really like that he’s just lied to Chie again, especially when she’d seemed at least somewhat genuinely worried (with Chie it’s hard to tell), but he doesn’t know what to say. Should he tell her he’d made up the work excuse so that he could bail as quick as possible and avoid being around his partner, whom he’s been having gay dreams about?

Hell. Fucking. No.

So a lie it is. A lie on top of a lie on top of everything else. Because why not. Yosuke makes a helpless noise in the back of his throat and flips his phone shut so he doesn’t have to look at his own texts anymore.

He’s just about to stuff his phone under the pillow and go back to hating his life in the dark when he spots the little red envelope still starting at him from the phone screen.

1 missed message.

Confused, he goes back to Chie’s string of texts. No, he’s pretty sure he read all these, and it doesn’t look like Chie has responded yet. But then he counts them and realizes that out of the eight messages the notification said before, Chie’s only sent him seven. His anxiety pulses again.

Throat suddenly tight, Yosuke hits the button and goes back to the inbox.

Prtnr – 1

Shit.

It’s like the universe is just straight up out to get him, because Yosuke can’t stop the way his stomach flips (not even remotely unpleasantly) upon seeing his best friend’s name in the inbox for the first time in days. His hands start to shake all over again and now he can’t even tell if it’s from an unfamiliar form of fear or if it’s the last piece of his mind still wrapped up in the string of images that had plagued him while he stress-napped.

Get a damn grip, he scolds himself, though even in his head the words do nothing to help. It’s just a text from Souji. Isn’t that what you’ve been wanting?

Yes. But also no. Not right now. Not when Yosuke is in no fit state to handle interaction – even through something as impersonal as texting.

(And there are also tinier, thinner voices in his ears that murmur tinier, thinner vices just behind his own thoughts and war with each other around and around. Things like how he’d been so hurt and worried, shouldn’t he just go ahead and check it and be glad Souji’s talking to him again? But also things like how he should just leave it unread like Souji had done to him for several days.)

In the end, Yosuke gives in and opens the message, instantly drowning in the mix of glee and guilt and longing that comes flooding in as he reads the single, sweet message.

 Prtnr: I didn’t get to say it after class but I hope your shift goes well. :)

 Heat rises to Yosuke’s face, bright and sharp. He’s blushing, he can’t even deny that he is, because it’s so innocuous but also just so Souji, and while it’s no different than ninety percent of the texts his partner has sent over the course of their friendship, it’s still so… so…

Yosuke feels the flush trailing down his neck to seep under his shirt and dust across his collarbones. He has to take a second to close his eyes and rest his phone against his forehead like a kid with a crush, the corners of his mouth pulling upwards in an involuntary smile. This is dumb; this is so, so dumb, why can’t he just keep his own emotions in check for five minutes? But even as mad as he’s been at Souji, even as hurt and upset as his friend has made him feel over the last couple of days – intentional or not – Yosuke can’t suppress the little spark of happiness that Souji’s well-wish brings.

So, so dumb.

But, because the world outside the TV is the one that isn’t shaped by thought alone, the pleasant, carbonated tingle of happiness soon runs out of fizz and Yosuke is left with the chilly spread of his earlier apprehension. He almost forgot that he’s still a mess.

With a sigh and a silent plea for his own adrenaline not to fuck him over, Yosuke rereads the message and wracks his brain for a response. Should he even respond at this point? What if Chie’s already told Souji that Yosuke wasn’t at Junes? What if Souji knew when he sent the text, and sent it because he knew and why trying to catch Yosuke in a lie?

He discards that thought immediately; as crap as Yosuke has been feeling over his partner going MIA for a while, he refuses to believe that Souji is capable of passive aggression. He’s too much of a leader, too blunt of a person; Souji might be the very definition of tactful most of the time, but he’s still someone that says what he means rather than twisting things. Passive aggression is something Yosuke has noticed Souji can’t seem to stand – regardless of his endless patience – so personal bias aside, Yosuke can’t bring himself to think that Souji would ever apply a tactic he’s so uncomfortable with from other people.

(Then again, that tinier, thinner voice murmurs, he’s been so out-of-character lately that for all you know… )

Yosuke grits his teeth so hard his gums start to sting, using the dull pain to ground himself outside his head before that particular train of thought can gain any sort of traction. He doesn’t have the strength to deal with the mental whiplash anymore.

Before he can go back to over thinking, Yosuke stabs his thumb at the keyboard on his phone and types the quickest, most generically vague response he can possibly think of that has even a semblance of safety – just in case he’s wrong.

 Yosuke: k

 He hates it the moment he sends it but it’s already done and he has no idea of what he can add to it to keep from digging deeper into the trench he thinks he might have already started for himself. There is a very noticeable part of him that is still fluttery, still warm and a little happy from earlier, but he doesn’t know what to make of it. He would tie it to relief at Souji finally texting him, but that doesn’t seem right. He could also attribute it to the aftermath of dreaming, but it’s a different feeling. He’s happy Souji is thinking of him again (not going down that possible hole of doubt and negativity,) but also terrified of what his reaction might mean. Because on its own if would be a perfectly normal thing – his friend is talking to him after scaring him shitless by ghosting him for a few days – but combined with all the more questionable things his brain has been doing, Yosuke doesn’t think he can brush any part of this off as “normal” anymore.

He can’t separate his usual feelings from the ones he’s been experiencing the past few days; how can he when he can’t even untangle them to begin with? And the scariest part? If they’re really, actually new, then what brought them on? And if they aren’t new at all, well…

How the fuck is he supposed to react to that implication?

Stomach turning, Yosuke pulls Chie’s string of texts back up so he can stop staring at Souji’s polarizing message. (How can something so fucking simple be so goddamn complicated?!)

He’s just my friend, he tells himself as he taps the button to light up the keyboard once again.

Nothing else. I was worried and my head played a shitty prank on me.

He types up a dirty, awful joke – something reminiscent of the stuff he used to pull back when he and Chie had first started actually talking, something about thick thighs and short skirts, something he might send while trying to flirt while concussed – and hits send before his conscience can convince him that what he’s doing is wrong.

I’m not gay.

  ---

 When Chie responds a little while later, offended and rightfully pissed, Yosuke lets himself go on autopilot so that he doesn’t have to think about what he’s saying. His fingers type out something hollow and placating without any sort of real apology and Chie sends him back a promise of physical harm. He doesn’t try and argue.

He’s just in the process of beginning to drag himself up out of bed afterwards when his phone buzzes again. He picks it up and flips it open without thinking, stupidly assuming it’s Chie sending him another not-so-subtle threat. It isn’t. Instead there is another message from Souji, asking Yosuke how he was doing and if his shift had gone okay.

Yosuke stares down at his phone until the screen goes dark again, tendrils of anxiety creeping back in to wrap around the base of his lungs. He feels so stupid right now; his lie sits heavy on his chest and he’s acutely aware that he has to decide what story he wants to stick to. On the one hand, he could tell Souji what he’d told Chie, that he’d messed up the dates and forgot he didn’t have a shift after all. On the other hand, he wonders if he hasn’t already shot himself in that particular foot with his god-awful, lackluster response from before. It wasn’t as if he’d really said much of anything with his single-lettered reply.

He doesn’t know what to do. Somehow, what with his brain’s self-cannibalizing, it hadn’t really crossed Yosuke’s mind that Souji might actually respond now that he was apparently texting people again. Granted, the radio silence from the beginning of the week hadn’t built any sort of confidence – just the opposite – but Yosuke still can’t help but feel stupid for not even considering that his friend would ask him about work. Souji always asks him about work.

Tired and fuzzy-headed, he decides to take the coward’s way out and sends yet another ambiguous, monosyllabic reply.

 Yosuke: yea

 He snaps the phone shut and closes his eyes, unable to watch the text bubble show up in the thread like a glowing, pointed finger. He feels like a scolded child.

Still in the dark, sitting on the side of his bed, Yosuke leans forward and props his forehead against the heel of his hand. He doesn’t know what to do. Here he is, falling apart because his head is somehow hyperfixating on things he has no desire whatsoever to keep thinking about. He should be disgusted, right? All of this – the dreams, the shower, the weird half-fantasy… thing that happened to him in the classroom that afternoon – it should be making him uncomfortable, afraid. And he is, but it’s not… it’s not for the reasons he knows (or thinks) he should be. He doesn’t understand anything right now. And on top of all everything that’s been happening he desperately wishes he could just talk to his partner again. Souji is his commander, yes, but Souji is a solid fixture in Yosuke’s life in other, more personal ways, too. Souji is his friend, the best one he’s ever known, and regardless of how absolutely fucked the past week has been, Yosuke misses him. If he were losing his mind over anyone else he might even be able to ask Souji about it (maybe, possibly, hopefully). If it were anybody but Souji himself, maybe Yosuke could try and glean some insight from his friend’s unprecedented therapist skills, because Souji always knows exactly what to say.

But no.

The only person Yosuke might have a chance at asking for advice is exactly the person that Yosuke is messed up about, and to try and broach the subject would only spell out certain doom. So he’s stuck. He’s stuck and he’s exhausted and he feels like he might be close to the point of breaking but he has no magic in his arsenal to make it all okay again. He can try to squash it down, to try and get his own shit together so that he can act normally around Souji again and pretend there was never a problem to begin with, but he knows, he knows that Shadows have been born from less and even if he managed to pull it off the knowledge would still be there. He could hide it from Souji (or try to) but he’d never be able to hide it from himself. Catch-22.

So yeah. He’s stuck. He can’t fix himself without Souji’s help, he can’t fix his friendship with Souji until he fixes himself, and all the while he’s left with nothing to grab onto for support to even keep his head above the water. He can’t even get a grip long enough to not act completely sketchy around Souji and keep his partner from suspecting something’s up. Because eventually Souji will. And then he’ll ask. And Yosuke will either have to keep lying – which Souji is bound to pick up on – or he’ll have to tell Souji the truth.

Yosuke thinks he’d rather face down his shadow again without any backup. At least his death would be quick.

And that’s something else to think about: Souji has seen Jirya, has seen him and accepted him just as easily as he’d accepted Kanji and Naoto and everybody else’s shadows later on. Souji is far from a shallow person, so, theoretically, Souji would probably be alright with Yosuke suddenly having thoughts about another dude – that little bit of info alone wouldn’t be enough to break their friendship. It’s the rest of it that might; Yosuke has no idea how Souji might take to hearing that Yosuke has pictured him naked, as unintentionally as it may have been. It’s not like he can just ask.

For a second, Yosuke tries to imagine how the scenario would transpire, putting himself in Souji’s shoes to see how he himself might react. But it doesn’t work. He and Souji are too different, with Souji being quieter and more serene while Yosuke tends to be louder, more passionate, the less likely of the two of them to keep his own reactions in check. He doesn’t think he could ever even get close to thinking like Souji does, not even if he genuinely tried. So he tries again, but switches instead to picturing Souji being the one confessing to having dreams about Yosuke and… oh.

Yosuke has to take a deep, sharp breath in to combat the way that thought knocks the air from his lungs. His heart rattles at the bars of his ribcage, pounding like he’s somehow run a marathon while sitting completely still. He digs his fingernails into the back of his own wrist to keep himself from slipping back in and following the daydream all the way to the end.

It scares him how badly he wants to.

I’m not gay.

Yosuke’s hands are shaking slightly around his phone as he opens it back up and goes back into his list of contacts, scrolling until he lands on Yukiko’s number.

 Yosuke: hey do u have ne pics from the pageant?

 This is normal, right? This is what normal guys do. Straight, heterosexual, perfectly normal guys.            

(He absolutely isn’t hoping that Yukiko has photos of Souji.)

His phone buzzes a few moments later, much sooner than he’d been expecting – though truth be told he’d almost been hoping she wouldn’t respond at all. She must not be helping at the inn tonight.

 Yukiko-san: I’m afraid I don’t. I’m sorry.

 Oh thank fuck.

He sends back a quick “np” and lets out a long, heavy exhalation. He’d asked – that was what mattered. He’d asked one of the hottest girls in town for pictures of more girls in swimsuits. That’s all. That was enough. The fact that part of him is unfathomably relieved she’d said no is just because they’re all his friends and it’d be awkward. …Right?

But then, it had never seemed awkward to him before; not until after he’d started having whatever mental breakdown he’s currently still trying to work his way through. Not until after he’d started having weird, inexplicable dreams about his male best friend.

(He absolutely hadn’t been hoping that Yukiko had photos of Souji.)

His phone buzzes yet again and another message from Yukiko flashes up across the screen.

 Yukiko-san: Did you ask Rise-chan? She took lots of photos of everyone backstage.

           Oh.

That’s right; Rise took pictures of everybody – Naoto, the girls, and the boys. Rise has selfies, has shots of Chie and Yukiko in their various outfits on her phone, has shots of Naoto before they were able to hide themself behind the stage curtain. Rise snapped photos of Yosuke, too, as well as Teddie and Kanji.

Rise has pictures of Souji.

(How easy would it be to ask her for them? How easy would it be to just text her right now and say “send me pageant pics” and not even necessarily specify. He could always just make the excuse of needing photos of the drag pageant because Teddie wanted them. Rise would do it, too. She’d do it and she probably wouldn’t even hesitate…)

Yosuke takes a harsh breath through his nose and grinds his teeth harder into his lip until he can taste the faintest hint of blood against the backs of his teeth.

I’m not gay. I’m not.

He brings his other hand up to clutch at his phone and types with both thumbs, jamming them into the keys so hard that it almost feels like bruises being left behind. He watches his hands instead of the screen, already too disgusted with himself for what he knows he’s writing to watch as the words begin to appear.

 Yosuke: nah thats ok

Yosuke: y dont u send me a new 1 nsted? ;)

           Yosuke snaps the phone shut so hard that he nearly smashes him own thumbnail between the screen and keyboard, still on the “send” button like lingering proof of his sins. He flings the accusing hunk of circuits and plastic away from himself across the comforter and brings his hands up to drag his fingers across his eyes. He wants to be okay with what he sent. He feels only rolling nausea instead – sea sick on dry land, with thick, guilty salt water pouring into his lungs with every choking breath.

He lays back down and curls up against the mattress like he’s just been kicked in the stomach, arms wrapped tightly around his waist. He stays like that, with his face pressed into the sheets until his head feels fuzzy from the lack of oxygen, and eventually reaches up to grab a pillow and press it over the side of his head. He breathes as best he can around the obstruction, willing the spots behind his vision to go away and for the dull and steady creep of bile to slide back down his throat. Please, he silently begs, though to whom he has no clue. Just let this all be over already.

Somewhere, deep in the furthest part of his mind, there is a subtle shift – like the quiet stirring of something long dormant now coming fully back to life – and the low, echoing sound of a multi-layered voice chucking from just beyond the dark.

[mimis-mm]

This is the second part of my first imagines that I cut in two part because it was getting way too long. 

You can read the first part here: x

First, I’m sorry for Saeran’s part, it kinda slipped my mind that the ask was supposed to be about when they learn so it’s just... hella long. And not really just about his reaction. But I had fun writing it so sorry not sorry

I also didn’t play V’s route (cuz I’m afraid to see Saeran dying), so I don’t know if what I wrote about the route is good. So please bare with me.

Warning: Suicide attempt mention, emotional manipulation, verbal abuse

Minor Trio learning that the MC has been depressed and attempted suicide in the past

Jijyun / V

Seven only told him you had some mental health issue in the past but nothing more. So, at first, he was more than skeptical. No way he was going to let someone who might have been chosen by Rika to join the organization. Not to mention your past with mental illness. But on the other hand, he didn't want his impression on you be tainted by Rika's possible involvement.

But he finally accepted, mainly because he wanted to give you a chance to prove yourself, but he didn't want to seem suspicious and make the others wanting to know the reasons. He still asked Seven to keep an eye on you to make sure everything was ok for you and didn't feel too trapped in the apartment. So, for the first few days, V got a report from him telling that you're acclimating pretty well to the situation and most of the members were already fond of you.  

Don't get Jihyun wrong though. He trusts Luciel, so if he says you're clean, you're clean. You know V, he's always worried for people feelings and well-being.

So, the moment he learns that you had an history with depression was in a series of events that includes him getting his shit together, told Saeyoung about his brother, then prevented Ray from committing suicide.  

But Jihyun still got poisoned though. Karma is a bitch.

"Seven, when will we arrive at the hospital?" You ask as you take a quick glance at Saeran's unconscious figure in the backseat in front of yours. Jumin gave the permission to Seven to borrow a van for the mission to have more space.  

"We're almost fucking there! Just look after Saeran." He spat while glaring at you via the mirror.  

You reprimanded the urge to shout back and took a deep breath.

"Seven, I know you're furious with Jihyun and I totally understand why. But lashing out on me won't help you feel better." You try to sound calm, but your voice is shaking as much as your hands.

You were able to hear his hands clenching at the steering wheel. "You're protecting him, you're the same to me. We should have let him die in the explosion."

"That would have make you no better than him or Rika, then."  

You looked at V, who's lying on the seat with his head on your thigh. His face looked more dead than alive. The only way you could tell he was still with you was his shallow breathing along with a few weak moans and how tense his expression was. He still had the split lip and the bruise on his cheek from Saeyoung's anger lashing out.

"It doesn't need to end with people losing their life, you know." You stroke Jihyun's blueish hair, moving the bangs from his face. "There's always another way."

"And what do you know about this?" He scoffed at you.

"Not much. Just that I once thought that if I wanted my problems and suffering to go away, I needed to end my own life." You glanced over at Saeran, feeling your eyes watering. You were able to see your younger self in him right now. "I was in your brother's situation once, and death is definitely not the solution. Even if it's someone else who dies."

Seven looked at the road with an intense stare, but his jaw was more relax than a minute ago. He didn't answer to your statement, probably because he wanted to think on the situation. So, the rest of the ride was in almost silence, and Jihyun's painful whimpers could be heard. At the hospital, the nurses took V and Saeran to another floor, leaving both you and Saeyoung in the waiting area. Vanderwook went outside for a smoke.

You were able to go see Jihyun in his room the next morning. You've been looking over him and stroking his hair for more than an hour when he woke up. You quickly stood up from your chair and took his hand.

"Jihyun, how do you feel?"

He sleepily looked at you and faintly squeezed your hand.

"Why are you here?" His voice was groggy from the sleep and medicine.

"I wanted to make sure you're ok. I was so worried about you." Your eyes began to sting and your vision became blurry. V put his other hand on yours.

"Please don't, not for me." You looked at him. His sadden eyes peered at you. " You heard Luciel, I shouldn't have survived."

"You were conscious?"

"Yes," he closed his eyes slowly. "I heard everything."

Your heart sank in your chest. "Even when I..." You didn't find the courage to finish. He nodded, then looked at you.

"Please let me be, I don't deserve any of your kindness."  

"Don't say that, Jihyun. You deserve it way more than you let yourself think."

He shook his head slowly. "Please, don't waste your energy on me. I'm not strong like you are."

It pained him to learn that someone who suffered enough in the past had to get involved in his bullshit. You should be having a blast with people you care about, not at the hospital trying to cheer up someone as pathetic as him. You let go of his hand and moved some of his hair from his blind eye with your finger.

"I'll go get you something to eat, ok? I'll be back in just a few minutes."

Your eyes met and he saw in your expression that you wouldn't let him stop you, so he simply nodded. You left, leaving him wonder if you were this considerate of others before your depression, or if you became like this after.  

It never crossed his mind that you could be like this only for him.

Unknown / Saeran

Like Seven, the information he gathered about you made him believe that you attempted suicide in the past. That kind of mental health history was exactly what Unknown has been looking for. He knows that people who suffered from depression in the past to the point of trying to end their own life are changed. And most of the time, these changes make it easier to manipulate them.

Saeran wasn't so thrilled to take advantage of someone's weaknesses that were similar to his. But if he did, then maybe Rika will see him as a more useful asset, and even let him out of the hacking room more often. Also, a new ice cream flavor from his favorite brand came out last month, but he never had the chance to try it out since he had to stay inside to hack.

The moment he learned for good that you attempted suicide was when you talked about it to Jaehee one night or morning depending on what you consider 2 am to be. He knew everything you wrote in the messenger, so he sure didn’t miss this precious information.

Saeran felt horrible. You suffered so much you tried to end your own life, but was still strong enough to continue living when it failed. You didn’t try to take revenge on those who made you suffered by taking their last breath, and it made him feel some sort of admiration for you. But he, he had to take advantage of it for his own selfish reason. He couldn’t bare it, so he let Unknown take care of what had to be done. 

Unknown, on the other hand, is the only person who is delighted when you talked about what you had to go through in your past, and possibly still do to this day, especially if you still suffer from depression or another mental illness. Now, he knew where to push to make you join Mint Eye and betray those hypocrites of RFA members. He was so glad Saeran let him handle the manipulation part. He was the best at it. 

So one morning, you woke up to the messenger app's alarm. You looked at the notification, but it was blank. Ok, that's strange. Maybe it's a bug.  

You open the app to find that a chatroom is open with only a weird portrait, like the one people have on social medias when they don't add their own profile picture. Or like the one Unknown used when he lured you into the apartment.

You decided to enter the chatroom, feeling nervous, only to be greeted by that familiar green background. You glanced at the names and you felt your heart stop for a second. Unknown really did hack into the messenger.

Unknown: [Y/N], good morning.

Unknown: Don't worry, I only want to talk.

Oh? He didn't even answer your message and now he wants to have a friendly chat? Yeah, right. Better tell Seven. You pressed the home button, but it didn't do anything.

Unknown: I bugged your phone, you won't be able to exit the chatroom. Not until we finish talking.

That asshole.

You: Ok I'm listening.

You: Or reading...What ever.

You facepalmed and waited for him to write something.

Unknown: So, I imagine you don't know why I chose you to infiltrate the RFA?

You: “Infiltrate” is not the word I'd use, but no, I don't know.

You tried again to close the app by all the different ways you know, but nothing worked.

Unknown: Did you ever wanted to make a difference in this loveless world?

Oh boi. This is not a good start.

You: What do you mean?

Unknown: People like you and I can't find happiness while surrounded by hypocrites and cowards. This is why I chose to help you.

You: So you made me enter an organization you don't like?  

Unknown: Yes. To show you how ugly people can be despite their sweet talks. They're not what they seem to be, [Y/N].

You furrow your brows and you can feel your hands getting moist. Why making you enter in contact with those kinds of people if he wanted to help?

You: I don’t follow you.

Unknown: This organization and its members are hiding something. You can feel it, don’t you?

You rub your hand on the sheet, trying to wipe off the sweat. He's right on this, there's something suspicious with all this “classified informations” thing. It even bothered Zen and Yoosung.

Unknown: So I'll make a deal with you. You can try to discover what they're hiding, and if you find something so disturbing that you want to quit, I'll come get you.

You: You sure I'm going to find something?

Unknown: This place is filled with evidences that the RFA is corrupted.

Unknown: Just ask Luciel and V about Saeran. You'll know.

Wait, who's Saeran? What should you know about? You type your questions as fast as you can, but a message from Unknown interrupts you.

Unknown: Shit hes trying to hack in

Unknown: I have to go

Unknown: but remember what we talked about [Y/N]

/\ Unknown left the chatroom /\

Soon after, you literally got kicked out of the chatroom. No confidentiality form to click on, nothing. You were too stunned to be able to react. What is going on right now?

Your phone ringed, and you didn’t have to look at the contact to know who's calling. You pressed on the green phone.

“Seven?” you ask, your voice a little shaky.

“[Y/N]! Did you talk to the hacker? What did he say? Are you alright?” It was the first time you heard him in such a distress state. He was clearly scared and… angry?

“Yes, I'm fine. I did talk to him but… are you ok, Seven?”

“Yes, I'm… Fuck no, I'm not!” he was shouting. “I've failed to protect you, I fell asleep when I shouldn’t. You can be angry at me, that's totally ok with me.” His voice was strangled.

"Seven, please calm down. Nothing bad happened." You tried to sound as calm as possible. "Take a deep breath, ok?"

"Right, sorry." He takes a long, deep inhalation, then exhaled slowly. "So, did he say something interesting?"

It took you a moment to make your decision to ask what Unknown told you, but you decided that right now wasn't the time for that. Besides, shouldn’t Seven already know about what you both talked about? Unless, the chat log has been erased.  

“He did say that the RFA is not to be trusted, but nothing else.”

“Really? Only that?” his voice seemed hesitant. You answered by humming. “Ok, so I'll run another test on the app and then strengthen the security. Stay safe.”

“You too, Seven.”

He hung up, leaving you alone with your thoughts.

A week later, you were at the hospital to visit Saeran with Saeyoung. You weren't sure if it was a good idea, but he said that he wanted to take all chances to help Saeran, and he didn't seem to be violent toward you when you were at Mint Eye's HQ. He knocked on the door, only to be greeted with silence. He chuckled and smiled with sad eyes.

“He never answers when we knock.” He said as he scratched the back of his head.

He still entered in the surprisingly dark room. The only light source came from the winow, which Saeran was looking through while sitting on his bed. He seemed absorbed in his contemplation of the cloudy sky and didn’t moved when Saeyoung and you walked in and closed the door.

“I don't want to see you.” he whispered between his teeth, then glared in your direction. His eyes widened, but he quickly returned to his grumpy self. “[Y/N]? What are you doing here?”

“Saeyoung asked me to come see you.” You smiled and walked toward him while handing over a plastic bag. “He also told me you like ice cream.”

He didn’t budge, only scanning you and the white bag you were offering to him. However, he was avoiding to meet your eyes and his fists were clenching on the white sheets. You decided to simply put your package down on the nightstand and took a seat beside the bed.

“How do you feel?”  

He looked back outside and tried to block any other stimulus than the clouds. “I dunno. Why do you care?”  

Just go away, you're making me uncomfortable.

“I’m worried about you.”

Bullshit. All you want is to feel better about yourself.

“Saeran, please look at me. I really want to help.”

“I'm not fucking stupid! You can't understand what I lived or how I feel!”

He was now looking you in the eyes, his face all crisped from anger and something else was darkening his eyes. You couldn't put your finger on it though.

You closed your eyes and began to consider what he just said. You talked after a minute or two:

“I may not know your situation at 100%, but believe me when I say that I once was desperate like you. So, even if I can't understand you completely, I can still provide some advices to deal with your problems.” You got up. “But for now, I'll go in the corner of shame with Saeyoung. Just tell us if you want anything, ok?”

You smiled lightly then went to a corner of the room, where Saeyoung was playing on his DS while facing you and Saeran. You sat next to him and took out of your bag a book or something you like to do to pass the time.

Saeran was sure he would become mad if you tried to interact with him more. You were too caring, too selfless when it came to him. Hell, he didn’t fucking care if it was because of your problematic past, your attitude toward him was just too much. It made him feel suffocated. 

After a few minutes, Saeran gave quick glances at the plastic bag. You did say it was ice cream, right? Then maybe, just this time…

He reached out to the bag and took the jar of ice cream out along with a plastic spoon. Wait, is it the one flavor he wanted to try for a month?

“Fuck yeah, it's gonna be so fucking good.” He whispered to himself at the same time of opening it.

You contained the laughter that threatened to burst out. That was a good beginning, right? He was accepting in secret the gift you gave to him after all. Maybe one day, he’ll accept people’s genuine desire to love him.

Vandwerwood

You were both at the twins' house, cleaning the table while Saeyoung and Saeran were in the computers room. You decided to make supper for them, since they never seemed to eat properly based on their trash and what they wrote on the messenger.

It has been three months since Saeyoung and Vanderwood deserted the agency and were taking care of Saeran with you. Well, mostly Saeyoung and you. Miss Vandy and Saeran couldn't be in the same room without trying to strangle each one another. You hoped that one day they'll learn to play nice, but it just seemed like a faraway fantasy for now.

"Why can't they just make an effort to do something in this house?" Vanderwood grunted while throwing one of the twins' unfinished dinner in the trash. "They just laze and play around."

"They're not mentally sane, Vandy. You know that."

He sighed heavily at you answer. You were always defending them, always taking their side when all he was trying to do was to teach them how to be proper human beings and not filthy pigs.

"Yes, yes." He rolled his eyes, then made his voice higher to sound like you. "They got severe depression and just the simplest thing like waking up can be really hard for them."

You stopped wiping the dishes and looked at him. Did he really just do that? While you were being serious?  

"Really, Vanderwood?"  

"What? You always create excuses for them." He said and turned his gaze toward you. "It's really annoying."

"Create excuses? Annoying?" Now you're frustrated. How many times did you tell him how much damages depression can do? Gosh, even a fucking five years old would understand. It's like he's not listening. "Are you even trying?"

He raised an eyebrow at you. "I'm not sure I follow." He paused for a second to look you over. "Oh, are you angry at me?"

"Yes, I am." You answered dryly, then threw your towel on his head. "And I'm going in the living room since you're being a fucking ass."

Ouch. He knew he did something really bad when you called him names. You walked out of the kitchen and plopped down on the couch. He finished cleaning and he let the dishes dry off to join you.  

You were still obviously mad, watching the TV with a pout. Vanderwood sighed and sat next to you, which made you hug your legs against your chest and put your head on your knees as to create a barrier between the two of you.

"Why are you being like this, [Y/N]? Every time we talk about their mental health and behavior, you get emotional."

You grunted and forced yourself not to look at him. If silence could kill, he would be dead a few times.

"Hey, don't give me the silent treatment, that's not fair."  

Still no reaction. Fuck it. He needed to know. This situation has happened in the past multiple times in the past, and this was the last. 

He closed the television with the remote and threw it on the sofa. Then, he took your head in his hand and forced you to look at him. His expression was tense, with his lips forming a thin line and his eyebrows furrowed slightly.  

"Don't think I'm going to leave you alone just because you're ignoring me." He caressed your cheek with his thumb and you could discern restlessness in his brown eyes. "I'll repeat myself; what is wrong?"

You looked down, but you still felt irritated. " You won't understand. You never do when it comes to sensitive stuff like that."

"Come on, it's not like you have depression like th..." He stopped when he saw your expression darkening. "Wait, are you?"

You shook your head slowly and whispered:  

"Not right now." You looked back at him, and his shocked expression made you decide to spill everything. At least he didn't seem annoyed that you had the same problem as the twins. "I once tried to kill myself, but it didn't work out.

There was a moment of silence. Vanderwood only looked at you with wide eyes and his mouth moved as to say something but stopped itself every two or three seconds. He suddenly pulled you in an embrace and stroked your hair.

"Holy fucking shit, [Y/N]. I didn't know, I... I'm so sorry. Did I hurt you when I said all those things about the twins?"  

You nod and hug him back. "It's ok, you didn't know." Ok, maybe you didn’t mean it, but seeing him so troubled made you not want to be too frank with him.

Now he felt like shit. All this time he has been too selfish and didn't see all the signs you've been sending his way. Well, maybe he did but just didn't want to accept that you suffered in the past.  

"I'll try to watch what I say about them, ok? And don't hesitate to talk about it if you feel the need. I think I've heard somewhere that it helps to talk about your problems."

You chuckled against him. He sure wasn't the best when it came to emotional support. But at least now he said that he would try and he was a man of honor, so you wanted to believe him.  

[junkobears]

Here Lies Dreaded V3 Discourse

So I have seemed to cause a huge kerfuffle in the hardcore Ouma conspiracy theorists standom, and a banal (if condescending, but seeing the response to it honestly justifies it more than anything now. “Don’t dish it out if you can’t take it”, you better believe I can take it and will now PROPERLY dish it out right back at you) comment about one of Tsumugi’s anime references has led to someone launching a hilariously personal attack at me for Daring To Disagree With A Theory That Was Posted On A Public Website. Someone who I wasn’t even initially responding too, at that. And has now blocked me before even allowing me to respond and clarify my original comments. Don’t want to deal with the consequences of being a repugnant, rude person I guess? Shock and surprise for Tumblr.

The link to the post is here, but I’ve taken the liberty to screenshot it just in case it gets deleted later, in hope that maybe there’ll be some reflection on this person’s part that this really is not an acceptable way to respond to people who have a dissenting opinion? Anyways, I will be responding to the personal attack post and that will be the last time I interact with this group, because clearly it’s not worth it to actually have a discussion about our respective ending theories. I ain’t got time beyond this for tedious insecure fucks these days.

Anyways, my response is under the cut to save my poor followers’ dashes. Sorry to drag drama onto my blog but I can’t really let this slide. I’m also tagging @jacks-plays-drv3 just because I assume the twin comes with the other with these two, and I want my response to have been seen.

Screenshot In This Link - This post is long enough without the image taking up more space, haha.

Let’s start with this mess, shall we? And I will go into painstaking detail.

Paragraph 1: So this already starts off with a whole lot of needless aggression and projection. So I’m not even going to attempt to be nice back. But: maybe I haven’t proven anything because I literally had not typed up a response to clarify my original comments @ Jacks yet before the rabid attack dog was unleashed? Like, there was literally no attempt from you to have a discussion that was a genuine offer from me, I was not out to get you actually. I also honestly just laughed at being called shallow, JUST LIKE THAT HORRIBLE CHARACTER TSUMUGI SHIROGANE right off the bat as well. That’s a compliment really, honey. Weirdly I don’t share the same opinions as you do. Tsumugi is my fave and unlike you I actually think about and HAVE analyzed/discussed her character in detail previously, which I would’ve been happy to share had you not immediately went into Blind Raging Idiot Mode. Guess we can’t have it all, huh?

As for needing proof that she makes the Flashback Lights... nevermind the CG that literally shows her making them during Chapter 6, but do you have proof that Monokuma is the person who makes the Lights instead of just placing them for the students? I doubt it, somehow. Cuz a lot of your theories don’t actually have any concrete proof. Quelle surprise. Probably why anyone not immediately on board with your headcanon gets you so goddamn angry, huh? Cuz it’s completely baseless and you know it at heart.

As for the Ouma comments, actually I have read the assorted creator comments regarding his character even if you like to believe I’m a slobbering moron who turned my brain off as soon as I finished V3, so yes I already know that his name was chosen to sound mastermind-like. Maybe this was to emphasize and make his fake mastermind reveal appear more legit on first read? JUST A THOUGHT, SWEETIE. You know the entire fucking point of Chapter 5? You’re so slavishly devoted to your theory that you actually are incapable of reading the basic fucking text from the actual game, but again. Not a surprise. Considering what I’ve read from your blog (really, who are you again? I only knew Jacks’ blog from before all this, so you taking such a personal offense at my comments is honestly hilarious but baffling at the same time. It ain’t all about you, babe.)

As for the lab door, here’s an simpler explanation (Occam’s Razor, look it up): The star sign constellation pattern was there as a hint for the player to connect Ouma’s messages from his dorm room to the vault in Amami’s lab once its opened and you can see the star signs in there. Or perhaps it was designed like that by TDR to make the students make that connection as well in the original script and think that Ouma was the mastermind cuz of the connection to Amami’s lab? Literally, there are a lot of possibilities, cuz it’s a NOTHING DETAIL THAT DOESN’T ACTUALLY MATTER IN THE BIG PICTURE. Considering Kodaka’s track record with writing these games I don’t actually believe it’s anything major, personally. He doesn’t really strike me as the type to hide this completely separate story underneath the actual story we got, and with such vague nothing “”””””””””””clues””””””””””””. You and Jacks do yourselves (well you already do cuz you love to jack yourselves off with how CLEVER AND BETTER you are than the rest of us plebs), sure, in believing otherwise (You have way too much faith in him as a writer. Or you’re desperately trying to pretend V3 wasn’t poorly written cuz you don’t like the Ch. 6 twist) but also realize that its nothing more than extrapolation on your part that it actually means anything beyond the.... SHALLOW (horror scream) connection given in-game.

And really, who the fuck cares if it doesn’t match the title of ‘Supreme Leader’? It’s already a ridiculous talent as it stands already. The entire point of his character is that everything about him, his motives and his talent is contradictory and weird. That’s why I like him, actually. He isn’t an abused martyr who never lies like you goons believe and he also isn’t the evil monstrous chessmaster some of the fandom thinks. It’s Complex Motives™ .

Anyways moving on. Pointing out an anime reference =/= DISREGARDING PEOPLE’S ANALYSIS. Pointing out that most of the plot leads up to and supports the fiction twist =/= uncritically agreeing with everything Tsumugi says. Actually, after examining the game’s story for myself I came to the conclusion that all the clues in it really only support her version of the story, really. There are a few things I think she lied about, but it is not CONCLUSIVELY proven she lied in my opinion and so I don’t really give a fucking toss until new canon comes out and reveals more of the V3 story. Oumatwin don’t real, gurl. If there was actually anything in-game beyond one obvious joke line in the NON-CANON!!!!!!! bonus mode supporting that he existed, maybe I’d respect your theory more. Even though you don’t deserve respect after your little tantrum. 

Paragraph 2: Jesus I already am investing way too much time into this response at people who don’t actually deserve it, oh well. But laughing hard at the attempt to try and act as if you weren’t being a snobby asshole with your comments. Again, HUGE AMOUNTS OF PROJECTION at me about things I literally have never done and said. I have never interacted with you or Jacks prior to my initial comment. No fucking clue why you brought up the SaiOuma shit, cuz I don’t even LIKE Saihara as a character and don’t like that fujobait ship in the slightest? But I guess it’s easier to assume that all your critics are the exact same fucking person with the same opinions, so you can feel more persecuted, huh? You literally did not even wait for me to respond or check my blog that would’ve easily disproven these dumb-as-fuck assumptions. And get off the fucking high horse (pun completely intended), you lot are not the only people in this fandom who are capable of critical thought. How completely self-obsessed can you be? 

For someone who claims to have a lot of critical thinking skills compared to this nasty fandom, you really are terrible at parsing other people’s words. You fucking know when I said “group of anime fans” that I was referring to Team Danganronpa, the organization literally mentioned in game as running the game. The group Tsumugi is part of. She literally has a company badge FFS. THEY ARE ANIME FANS. THEY ALL STARTED KILLING GAMES CUZ THEY ALL LOVE THIS SHITTY SERIES. I can’t believe this had to be explained. And the rest of this paragraph word salad is the most pedantic argument. It’s really not hard to believe an organization in this series would have access to all this tech. And yes, it’s a popular TV show in-universe, of course it’ll have funding. And the whole damn point of the ending is that the V3 world is consuming fiction the wrong way by having real-life killing games, missing the entire point of the DR series and fiction in general? What’s your actual point?

Paragraph 3: Again more assumptions, I wasn’t ‘crying’ about being called gullible. I was just pointing it out as part of your extremely unnecessary smug dismissal of my post. That you really haven’t disproved at all, btw. Honestly the childish response you both had to me just makes me laugh out of pity more than anything. And if I was really upset I wouldn’t have offered to have a discussion with you or even continued to reply after Jacks initial (vague) post about what I said. So don’t put words in my mouth. And yes my analysis was not completed in my initial comments. It’s Tumblr fucking replies, I can’t fit the entire fucking dissertation of Tsumugi opinions in there for you to jeer at in there. Again, I offered to share my opinions and got this as a response, so lol. You are your own worst enemy when it comes to trying to get people to take you and your theories seriously. 

Paragraph 4: Especially since you immediately jump to PULLING THINGS OUT OF YOUR ASS (seriously, fucking snorted at this part. I want this whole diatribe on my fucking gravestone. It’s by far the most hilariously petty thing ever said about me on this site.) instead of letting me explain my position. If you just want to be in the creepy cult Oumatwin echo chamber you should’ve just said and blocked me ASAP instead of word salading vague bullshit justifications for why actually people who disagree with you are just stupid crybabies who can never hope to understand your genius. Again, my initial comments didn’t whine about not being taken seriously at all, I was pointing out the hypocrisy/rudeness is all. And again, get off the high horse about critical thinking. I have thought about Tsumugi’s character and how she relates to the over-arching plot and how truthful it is, and the overall ‘mystery’ of V3 (spoiler: there is none. it was all solved by chapter 6). I have thought about this game. In fact I dedicate too much time to critical analysis of this series that doesn’t actually deserve it cuz lately I find Kodaka to be a hack writer. Your assumptions are flat-out wrong, dear. And AGAIN. I WOULD’VE. SHARED AND DISCUSSED IN MORE DETAIL HAD I BEEN GIVEN THE OPPORTUNITY. But rude fucks gonna vomit shit out of their mouth cuz they have literally no self-control and have meltdowns at the slightest difference of opinion, I guess. 

Your extreme hatred for Tsumugi as a character truly shines through. Clearly no thought has been put into her from your end, even though you and Jacks rage about people not taking Ouma seriously as a character. Double standards as always with fujos. Nothing I’m not used too, she is incredibly unpopular in this fandom. And everyone is entitled to their own opinions. So I’m not even mad at that. I have never said otherwise. Even you and Jacks are valid in having your own theories and thoughts. The ending of V3 is designed entirely so everyone can analyze the game for themselves and draw their own conclusions about the story and themes. That’s the whole point. Even though I personally dislike that as a writing decision on Kodaka’s part because I would prefer the story to be conclusively ended and the epilogue is a giant turd that misses the entire point of Chapter 6 and enables shit (anal pun intended, dumbass) like this to start spreading as “Analysis”. But hey, to each their own.

However I will not be interacting with either of you again after this post though, even though I was willing to discuss beforehand, because you both have shown yourselves to be incredibly vile with the way you approach other people in this fandom, and especially those who don’t share your conspiracy theory. Despite the absolutely ironic comments I’ve seen from Oumanous in their later, also terrible posts about how you need to understand your opponent before engaging, which they literally failed entirely to do before engaging the firing squad at me and other commentators who responded. So much for the sanctity of discussion, huh? Enjoy your circlejerk. Everyone else who follows me in this fandom though? Please consider blocking these two if you are also a sane human being who is capable of polite discussion/disagreements. They are not worth your time otherwise. They were really not worth my time writing this post, but I felt I had to say something.

In conclusion: Out with the both of you.

[thetragicescape]

18, 21, 23, 25, 29 annnnnnd if you were given the opportunity to have all of your wishes and desires to come true but lose the one you love.. would you? Why or why not..

18: Most traumatic experience: -when I was 7 years old my mom and 4 year old brother and me were in a horrible car wreck. My brother and I survived but my mom didn’t. I saw her broken bloody body and had to watch the life leave her eyes. It was and still is devastating to me cuz she was my hero,my idol,the one I wanted to be like when I grew up. Even 14 years later it hurts like hell cuz i loved her more than anything and still do. -The abuse my family put me through and continue to try and put me through. -Being bullied and outcast all my life -Being raped multiple times. -Being sexually harrassed and assaulted by one of my dad’s employees (a registered sex offender who had been to jail for molesting a child) for years. When my dad found out, he took absolutely NO legal action against him because it would “hurt his business” (he knew the guy was a sex offender for 6 months before i finally got the courage to tell my dad what he’d done to me and HADN’T fired him immediately when he found out. For GOD knows what reason. He told my dad that he had changed and was past it,while doing it to me the whole time in secret. My dad was scared that the fact he knew the dude was a sex offender for 6 months before firing him would make him look bad). If it was my kid I’d sue the fuck out of them. It really fucking hurt because I felt unimportant and insignificant to my own father. Like I didn’t deserve justice or even the time of day. Like I was nothing more than dirt under his shoe and the world’s shoes. I had gone through horrible things in those years,and my dad refused to do anything about it for the sake of his precious business,which I guess was more important to him than his only daughter. Also,after it took me years to work up the nerve to tell my dad about it,he blamed me for it going on so long,asking why I never did anything to stop it for all that time. Well,he was way bigger and stronger than me as well as cunning and manipulative as fuck. Im tiny and weak and can’t stand up for myself,verbally and physically. He was an evil man,I was his victim and my dad blamed me. Every bad and traumatic thing that happens to me,my family finds a way to make it “my fault” which hurts more than anything else. Fuck them,they aint family to me at all. -My ex boyfriend leaving me to die on the floor of a dairy queen bathroom stall after I ODed on meth,cocaine,molly,and a whole bottle of vodka. Not only did he leave me there, he also stole my phone,car,macbook pro and all my money ($20,000 to be exact here) and pushed my car off a mountain. The cops doing nothing about it because “since I gave him permission to drive it earlier that day,it wasn’t stolen” yeah i totally wanted him to steal my car. I couldn’t have given him permission to rob me and take my car when he did it,as I was unconscious and dying on the floor. The cops’ excuse was such bullshit I get angry thinking about it,even. It sucked. Almost the worst part of it was my family blaming ME for him robbing me (saying I “shouldn’t have been hanging out with him") such douchebags holy fuck. Yes,I shouldn’t have been around him and wish I never knew he existed,but that does NOT make his cruel,horrendous act MY fault in any way,shape or form. He is the piece of shit who thinks its acceptable to leave someone who showed him nothing but unconditional love on the floor to die and rob them blind. That’s not my fault at all,I was the victim of a crime. Every bad thing that happens to me is my fault in their eyes which is why I never told them I got raped. They’d blame me for it. Anyway i hate my ex with a passion for what he did and he is the only human being i could kill with no remorse. Fuck you Cody,I hope you burn in hell.

21: What I love most about myself: Fuuuuck this is hard as a person with a nonexistent self esteem. If I had to pick one thing,I guess it would be my kind heart.

23: My relationship with my sibling(s): awful. My little brother basically blindly agrees with my dad on everything, so he doesn’t like me. Especially due to my past drug use,even though I got sober. He doesnt think you can smoke weed and be sober (he and my dad are super Christian conservative and against weed. They literally treat it like it’s fucking heroin,and no I’m not joking. It’s fucking ridiculous) Recently we aren’t speaking since my dad kicked me out of the house because he didn’t approve of my husband. So my bro, being the sheep he is,doesn’t bother to think for himself and hates me cause my dad does. He’s the exact opposite of me- very religious, prudish,square,and straight edge as fuck. So no wonder he hates me. I’d give anything for him to think beyond my dad and try to have a relationship with me because he is my brother and I love and care about him, but he,like the rest of my family,couldn’t care less whether I was dead or alive. Fuck him.

25: My idea of a perfect date: anything in the world as long as you are by my side 😍😍😍😍😘😘😘😘

29: A reason I’ve lied to a friend: I absolutely HATE lying and usually only did it to cover my ass. Way back when I was in college and using meth heavily,I lied constantly to my best friend/roommate Savannah about it so she wouldn’t know. She has a twin sister who was also a meth addict and she was constantly telling me how gross she thought meth was and how gross she thought her sister was for doing it. I was scared she’d be disgusted with me too if she knew I was also doing it,so I made up countless lies to her, any and everything that kept me under the radar. Honestly,I was so damn twacked out all the time, I have no idea how the fuck she didn’t notice,especially since she spent so much time around her sister who’d been doing it for a hella long time. I was just super grateful she never noticed shit. It was a miracle I pulled it off,but fuck I hated lying to her. I wished I could tell her everything,but I didn’t want her to hate me over it. My reasoning behind it was that I didnt wanna lose her as a friend (we were pretty close amd still are now),and I thought she would never be my friend again if she knew about my addiction. For a while it worked, until the day before I got robbed, when my ex ratted me out to her for no reason and even showed her my pipe (again,FUCK YOU CODY). I was so scared she was gonna hate me and not wanna be my friend anymore but she took it surprisingly well,way better than I ever thought she would. She even hugged me. Shes hella cool and I miss her. She’s glad I got clean and we are still great,close friends to this day. Im so grateful to still have her in my life. Baby,all my wishes and dreams came true because of you, so fuck no im not giving you up. I get both my love and my greatest dreams coming true already 😍 you are my dream come true

[lil-nct-scenarios-11]

NCT- A Strange Talk || Gang au- part 9

Group: NCT- all members 

Theme: Gang au 

Type: series- fluff+ angst          

*Warning- this series will cover some dark themes such as abuse, drugs, and crude language so please read at your own discretion, if these themes make you uncomfortable at all, please do not read this

Plot: Your mom comes into your house unexpectedly and you shared an emotion conversation. Jeno comforts you after she leaves and you tell him your side of the story. We go back to Taeyong and Yuta’s to hear a few late-night talks about what happened that long, eventful day. 

Previous parts: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 

“Mom? Wha.. what are doing here?” you ask, completely bewildered. 

“You never called back so I got even more worried so I had to come see you darlin’.”

“No, I mean how did you get in?” 

“Oh don’t worry about that baby. I made your favorite pasta for you, let’s go eat,“ she says happily as she enters the house. 

“Stop! What are you doing? You aren’t supposed to know where I live! This.. this doesn't feel right,” you say, holding your head. 

“Of course this doesn’t feel right, I need to take you home honey. You can’t possibly live here, this isn’t your home, this place is just disgusting,“ she says with a prominent look of disgust on her face. 

“No it’s not, this place feels more like home then it ever did with you. And you can’t take me with you! Literally and legally ‘cuz you don’t have any custody over me.” 

“Then tell me who does? ‘Cuz your bastard of a father isn’t here to look after you, he got busy sending himself to jail,” she snaps. 

“I don’t know mom! I don't know! With you I never know. There’s a good reason you don’t have any custody over me, I hope you haven’t forgotten it. And in the meantime, you can just do everyone a favor and leave. ‘Go home’ like you said. I don’t have the strength to put up with you now or ever, you always push me over my limit. Please just go, I’m really tired,” you say weakly.

“I drove all this way for you and this is how you treat me? No, that won’t do!” 

“Look, I don’t know if you ever got it or not but you really aren’t supposed to see me.” 

“Or what? What are you gunna do?” she asks boldly, standing with her hands on her hips, waiting for your answer. 

“Do you really want me to answer that?”

Your mom took a deep breath after a slight pause, “You know I really care about you right? Is it so wrong to see my little boy/girl? I missed you so much baby, its been so long since I’ve seen you. You changed so much, look at how tall you’ve gotten,” she comments, coming towards you with her arms open. 

A tear falls down your face as you shake your head as you say, “I don’t trust you. I can’t believe you. All you ever did was hurt me all my life because you’re a manipulative lair.” 

“But I changed-“ she admits, her hand out to touch your face. 

“Don’t. Don’t take another step towards me. I won’t hesitate to call the cops. People like you can never change, you’ve just managed to use yourself that’s all.”

“Why do you think that? Do you know how much it hurts to hear you say that?” her voice breaks as she stops in her tracks and looks at you with her head to the side, tears welling up. 

“Too bad, that’s not my concern. Now please leave before I make the call,” you sniffle, turning you face away from her. 

“You’re just like your dad, every bit. He always talked to me like that too, calling me all those nasty names. I see how it is, it’s not your fault. Your damn father fed all these lies in your head didn’t he? He managed to turn my own child against me. Come with me and I’ll show you I’m nothing like what he says,” she says in an enthusiastic, desperate tone, extending her hand for you to grab. 

“No, I’ve seen what I needed, and I realize how much better dad and I are without you. Don’t you get it, if you do so much as touch my hand, you could end up in jail for violating your restraining order. So I beg you, mom please,” you drop to your knees, putting your hands together. “Please leave and don’t ever come back.“ 

“If that’s what’s best for you baby then I will,” she nods sadly, wiping a tear. 

“Yes mama, that’ll best the best for both of us I promise. So please promise me that you’ll leave and never think of me again,” you beg as your tears threaten to fall but you firmly forbid them.

“Ok, I will,” she whispers. She walks over and leaves her homemade pasta and the keys on the coffee table. Then she slowly walks over to you and carefully helps you to your feet and then firmly hugs you, clearly never wanting to let go. You feel her silent tears hit your back and your shaky hands hold her. She lingers for a little bit and only when she retracts herself is when you realized how much you genuinely missed her. She looks at your red face and glossy, puffy eyes and carefully wipes away the single tear that escaped. She plants a kiss on your forehead like how she used to, then she turn and walks towards the open front door. 

“Bye my baby, I love you,” she says with a wave and a feeble smile that completely resembled yours. 

“Bye mama,” you barely whisper. 

Then she closes the door and is gone. You hear her car door close and her engine rev as she drives away from you, forever. 

You shakily stand for a bit but then fall onto your knees, sobbing your heart out. Jeno rushes to your side instantly and holds you tightly. His wet hair hits the side of your face lightly and the water droplets from his hair mix in with your tears. 

“Shhh, it’s ok, it’s ok. I’m here,” Jeno soothes as he lightly rocks you back and forth on the cold wooden floor.  

_______

“Alright good night everyone,” Ten yawns as he runs his fingers through his hair, waving lazily as he heads towards his room. 

“Yeah, imma go to sleep too guys, night,” Kun says quickly as he follows Ten to their room. 

“Good night,” everyone mumbles. 

Ten plops face-down on his bed and Kun closes their door as he leans against it to ask, “Hey, you ok?” 

“Yea why,” Ten replies as he turns over to face Kun. 

“Well other than the fact that you never go to bed around 11 on a Saturday night, nothing. But I just thought that you left rather abruptly earlier when Yuta hyung brought up Johnny’s name and I don’t think that’s a coincidence, care to prove me wrong?” 

“Wish I could say yeah but I would just be lying. So I won’t ‘cuz I can’t lie to you but I’m still hoping you don’t see ever him.”

“Why not, shouldn’t it be the other way around?” 

“No, not when it’s him. He’s a very difficult guy and no one would approve of him, not even you, not with the reputation that he has. And I know I shouldn’t be with him but I can’t leave. We’ve been through so much together for me to just leave like that. I’m not proud of the shit he’s done but somehow I keep convincing myself that one day he will change. And I can’t wait for that day to come ‘cuz I can’t wait to proudly call him mine when he’s finally become a better man. But I know I have to wait a long time for that to finally happen,” Ten sighs. “Anyways, the air feels different doesn’t it? It feels so heavy and tense, feels like something big is ‘bout to happen.” 

“Yea, it really does. Maybe it ‘cuz school is starting Wednesday? Or it could be something else as well, something with your guy?” Kun suggests. 

“Yea that could be it but it feels like something deeper. Nah what am I saying? It’s late and I’m just saying weird shit now. I should get some sleep, night Kun,” Ten mumbles as he settles under his covers. 

“Night loser,” Kun responds as he turns off the light and slumps into his bed on the opposite side of Ten. 

___

Taeyong is brushing his teeth, getting ready to go to bed when he feels Yuta wrap his arms around his waist and nestle his neck in his own. Taeyong spits out the remainder of the toothpaste foam and rinses his mouth before turning to face Yuta. 

“It's been a long day today huh?” Taeyong asks, holding Yuta’s cheek affectionately. 

Yuta nods then answers, “Yea. Oh I saw Renjun today at Y/N’s house and I had a chance to talk to him. But when I came home then I realized how much I miss him and the other guys. Mostly Jaemin, I know he’s facing the brunt of his own brother’s death. And with how Johnny’s been acting recently, sometimes I wish I never left so I could’ve helped or even prevented all this. I made a promise to Dongwoo that I’d look after Jaemin but the only looking I’ve been doing is seeing him deteriorate. And those marks- oh god. What have I done? Dongwoo was my everything and the only thing he ever asked of me and Johnny was to protect his little brother. And here I am making all these promises to everyone but I can’t even keep the one that matters most to me. I guess the reason I keep doing this is if I make enough promises then maybe-” 

“Babe, its ok. Stop beating yourself over this. I know it sounds horrible but you’re only human. And the fact that you’re reflecting over your actions show your character and that you want to make a difference. It’s not too late, you can and you will do something about this. We just gotta figure out how. But for right now baby we gotta get rest,” Taeyong says softly. 

“Yea, you’re right. I just haven’t been able to stop thinking about ‘him’ since that day. I haven’t seen him since I left and I know I shouldn’t be talking about my ex but you’re all I have now. You saved me and helped me to transform into the best version of myself. If I never met you, who knows I could’ve been like Johnny and-” 

“Shh don’t you dare say it. No you’re not that person anymore, I know for a fact you’d never lay your hand on anyone so don’t even think it. And it’s ok to take Doyoung’s name. I’m not gunna get mad, I mean in a way I did just snatch you from him so I understand his hatred for me. But baby it ok to talk about him though, and I know you miss him too. I can tell, maybe you should talk to him one day if you get the chance. You two haven’t talked since that day and this is the first time since you came here that you talked about him. I was wondering all these years when you’d take his name in front of me and not treat him like some of taboo. I am your friend before your boyfriend after all, so most of my advice are from a friend point of view. Although, I should think about him from my ‘boyfriend stance’ ‘cuz I don't want to encourage the wrong the thing. Hmm maybe that meeting thing isn’t such a good idea,” Taeyong says jokingly. 

Yuta laughs whole-heartedly, “Haha don’t worry babe I don’t think you’d ever be able to let me go. I mean, I wouldn’t be able to let you go. ‘Cuz all those added bonuses I can get from you as my boyfriend and not as a friend is great. And speaking of which-” Yuta wiggles his eyebrows. 

“Eww, why do I love a pervert like you? You need to go to bed like now ‘cuz babe, your mind is all over the place,” Taeyong says as he locks his arms around Yuta neck. 

“Nope, it's only on one thing right now and that’s-” Yuta starts as he leans to kiss Taeyong but he places his finger to Yuta’s incoming lips.

“Sleep! Ah what a beautiful thing, too bad I don’t get any with you,” Taeyong mutters to himself as he pecks Yuta’s lips briskly then turns to climb into bed. 

Part 10

*gurl I was struggling to find a gif of yutae even tho Ik damn well tht they’re always together but like this gif isn’t bad so ill go w it 

*anywhoo I realized tht ive been writing abt the same damn Saturday for like at least 4+ pts lol. But for the next part I'm planning to make it a lil diff either by writing in flashbacks or just fast forwarding the plot a bit, so look forward to tht 

[argaliaofficial]

i started typing this earlier but then had to go to work so now im just gonna finish it so i get it off my chest

back when i was with my first ex, meg, we went to this private christian school i prolly made a post about this on here before but its topical right now i didnt sleep at all and im tired enough to spill my fucking guts out some more 

so anyway we went to this private christian school and thats when it happened. ive honestly repressed a lot of my time there i was not doing great but what i do remember just makes me feel sick. like, meg aside, the school just sucked. 

for context the way it was set up was that we had “placement tests” to see where we were in subjects like math and english, and however we did made us get placed in PACEs according to our skill level. in theory this is fine i suppose, but the thing was that there were no alternatives to the PACEs. 

PACEs were part of the learning curriculum of our school which was ACE- Accelerated Christian Learning. they were basically little study pamphlets that went over instructions on how to learn certain subjects and whatnot, while also having a christian perspective on things. scripture verses were abundent in them, and they had like a continuous series of comics going in there about their character Ace Virtuson and friends. 

Along with the PACEs, the classrooms were set up like an “office” of sorts with cubicles that you sat in. For me honestly that was one of the many hells because it was so cramping and clinical and I just do not learn well in that sort of environment. so you’d sit quietly for like 8 hours a day with occassional breaks with nothing but your PACE pamphlets to work on. you couldnt speak to any body, and if you needed help, there was a flag system in place where you’d put a flag up and have to sit around and wait for a teacher to come assist you, and usually their assistance only lasted briefly because theres countless OTHER students to get to, and nepotism is a thing and if they dont like you or think of you as a problem kid, you’re less likely to get the aid you need.

i was one of those problem kids. 

early on, i could manage that set up when my work was easier, but when i hit “high school age” and got into more advance work i began to suffer horribly. it didnt help that at this time, i got with meg, but less about her right now and more about how this school system fucking failed me and others tbh 

i do not learn by reading information. at least, i dont retain it. i need to discuss with people, with my peers and professors. i need one on one sometimes, especially with math- my biggest struggle. but how the school was set up made that sort of learning almost impossible. your peers were all at different levels, so group discussion was rare. their were attempts, but they never lasted long, and the extent of the help basically surmounted to the teachers just reading what the PACEs already said and vaguely explaining more, and that blew. 

so, me, being a hands on group learner who has to talk and listen to even retain information and needs to be allowed to move around often instead of being cramped up, started to fall behind in my studies. badly. and of course, instead of the teachers trying to asses WHY it was you were falling behind, you got written up and had to have your parents sign a slip. you could get written up for a few things and these were always detentions of sorts. usually they were lunch but if you were bad enough you’d get an after school one. i accumulated these almost once a day and after a while i got tired of having my parents sign them EVERY SINGLE day and just forged their signatures. i got away with that like 75% of the time lol 

like they were just for the same shit ‘oh ur kid didnt do their homework blah blah ur kids out of dress code blah blah” and so i was just “whatever” because like... nothing seemed to change i was just being perpetually punished for being unable to keep up in my studies. my parents tried to get a math tutor for me but halfway thru i think freshman year she moved and that was that

i got so fucking sick of just being behind while my other peers seemed to be moving forward that i started bullshitting my work just to get thru. ofc that didnt do anything because i wasnt learning the work, and because i lied about my answers and cheated i got punished again. and i was just like “whatever” 

i cried all the time. parent teacher conferences were hell. i always cried. it felt like i couldnt convey to them why i was such a fuckup. like i wasnt making sense, or i was being overemotional. instead of trying to make changes they just talked about how i had to work harder. least i think. i’ll be honest i always just disassociated during those meetings before going into meltdown mode.

on top of that, i was in a “gay” relationship with a classmate, and lots of bad stuff happened. ive always had an overactive imagination. great for being a wannabe artist. not so great when youre already an easily manipulated undiagnosed autistic child. me, her, and my current gf actually had our own little world! thinking back on this now, for me at least it was escapism to try and just cope with how miserable i was at school 

i dont know how soon in the “relationship” it was before things got sexual. my concept of time during those years at foursquare is so scattered. according to posts ive seen on dA me and her were together or at least “friends” for 2 years? so actually i think my saying “freshman year in high school” is inaccurate and things got bad the tail end of middle school and continued until i was a sophomore before switching schools.

ANYWAY, so yeah, along with all this school nonsense, i was in a gay relationship, one that was abusive in many aspects. ofc at the time i didnt know that i was being abused! i just thought yknow her forcing herself into me sexually was kinda par the course and i was already kinda a sexually curious kid growing up so like.. i was looking for that i guess? it hurting cuz she went in dry is just to be expected, yadda yadda. pretty sure i cried? and i know for a fact that i still sleep in the room where she raped me like that and its sometimes just “yea i was literally right in that spot when i was raped lol”

and she would constantly want me to touch her sexually too, and when i said “no” and pulled my hand away that she had been trying to force down her pants because i wasnt personally ready to do that she’d always complain and make me feel bad cuz i wasnt comfortable touching her. “i always get you off but you never get me off!” 

and at the time i didnt just tell her to fuck off cuz i didnt know any better. i didnt know that it was ok for me to not be ready to do that. i thought i was a bad person for not being ready to pleasure my partner, even tho its not my fault if shes ok w/ pleasuring me, and im ok with being pleasured (even tho tbh it was hit or miss sometimes she just did it lol), but im not ready to touch her, i guess? and like i tried to communicate with her and im pretty sure i told her that if she didnt wanna jerk me off cuz i couldnt do it to her yet that was fine but whatever

on the fourth of july she started groping me out in public while we watched the fireworks and i remember trying to get her to stop cuz i wasnt comfy with doing this in public cuz a) this was years ago and homophobia was a lot more common especially in this boonies town and b) i dont like seeing other couples being handsy in public so i dont want to be handsy in public either

and i remember while shes groping my chest and im trying to get her to stop theres this group of older kids in front of us and they see. and they start snickering. they started snickering at the sight. and i was so mortified and wanted to die.

looking back those kids should get hit by a fucking bus for laughing at someone getting molested and being obviously uncomfortable with it but i guess its funny cuz “lesbians! haha look at that pervy lesbo touching that other lesbian!”

and thats the story of why every fourth of july i want to kill myself

things kept progressing, ofc. i remember one night, while we were camping, i finally caved and fingered her. i forced myself to think “yeah ok i can do this” and i just thought the crippling anxiety i felt was cuz i was nervous to be intimate with my girlfriend for the first time like this, but really i was probably scared she was gonna hurt me since by that point she had. she had made herself perfectly clear in her mannerisms and tone of voice that she was stronger and bigger than me and could hurt me. 

and a few occasions she did. one time she started choking me so badly that i honestly thought “oh my god, shes going to kill me here at school”. i still sometimes feel her nails digging into my throat, and i dont think ive ever been as terrified in my life as i was in that moment. i dont think she would have stopped had a teacher not intervened. 

there was only one time i ever hit her, and that was before school started, and i had finally lost my shit over how much she kept fucking with me. all i remember was i came to school angry at her. over what i dont remember. she was always toying with my emotions, and i think that it had built up over the time that i finally snapped walked into class before school started, walked over to where she and alyss were talking, and a slapped her across the face before i walked over to my desk

i dont think i got in trouble for that cuz no one snitched? idk i mightve, but i didnt care. i was angry at her, angry at the school, and suicidal. 

i remember one time during a break i was crying. a teacher from another class came up to me and asked what was wrong. i told her i wanted to die. she just looked at me all uncomfortable. i think she mightve said something before walking off?

nothing came of that. 

i was more worried that i would get in trouble for being in a gay relationship than as apposed to thinking that these teachers- people who are supposed to protect their students- would help me. i gave up on them even recognizing the signs of me being abused. i feel like they wouldnt have even taken it as seriously as we were both “girls”, and this was back before talk of how women can be abusive was more common place. abuse was still strictly seen as male on female violence. and to some people, gay violence was comedic. 

eventually, one night, it all came to light. at least, that she and i were sexually involved. that week was a blur. she was taken out of school. it was brushed under the rug. everyone trying to save face i guess and keep other kids from finding out, but somehow i always felt like they knew. they knew that she was taken out of school because of me. because we were gay

i tried to move on, but my studies never got better. i just grew more jaded. i never did any work. i mouthed off to the teachers, continued getting detentions and just plainly stopped caring. no one could get me to do anything. i would play hooky. 

and that was just.... my life. perpetual anger at a system that failed me spectacularly. to this day i still hate that place. i cant be there. i was groped and molested and it was treated like nothing

so yeah

thanks for listening to my ted talks