#shes come home from gambling halls at like 5 in the morning locked the door and just

[crowshoots]

absolutely in my grief tonight about how jesper views his addiction and how much he fucking hates himself for it

[starboardsquiggly]

Time In a Bottle

It wasn’t an uncommon thing for police sirens to spring to life in the middle of the night. 1920 the war had ended but through the window slits of celebration within Bigg City crime had begun to sky rocket. The nights were on lock down as police and military forces gave their hours and patrolled the streets, especially in the poorer communities nearer the less industrialized parts of the city.

Zebedee Briggs leaned against his door frame, blocking the view into the porch, he crossed his arms and nodded listening to the instructions of the shorter man standing opposed him.

Zak lent him a cigar and they smoked while he filled him in on Zero’s next gig. “It’s not even a gamble, Johnny’s went against the big man one too many times, can’t wait to see him sunk.” 

“If this goes sideways, I-“

“If this goes sideways it’ll be the last time- yadda fucking yadda, you pull this bullshit every time we have a hit and every time you sit like a good little doggy.” He spat nicotine on his boot and chortled. “We’ll see you at midnight Zeb.”

“Piss off.” He slammed the apartment door.

“Daddy?”

In a city so damned by criminals why had she been born into this? She wore a blue night dress and her hair was freshly washed and braided. Learning to do that was tricky but her giggles when her curls bounced were more than he could ask for.

He picked her up to carry her on his hip. “What are you doing up, munchkin?”

“Was that uncle Zak?”

He starred at her. The boys had played poker at his place a few times and made acquaintances with her but hearing that question threw him off balance. “Yeah- yeah it was why?”

“Why doesn’t uncle Hercules come over anymore? I liked his stories the most.”

Children, Zebedee had learned the hard way were far to smart for their own good. If she could piece together a bazillion piece puzzle as a hobby that she had asked him to glue together to hang on her wall, then he had no doubt she would start to put two and two together if he answered honestly.

He tickled her, tension in his shoulder blades dissipating with her squealing laughter.

“Let’s get you back to bed before the sun comes up, aye?”

She yawned, cuddling into her fathers chest. “Aye…”

She would be turning 5 next week. He wondered if this next job would bring him enough money to buy her a ship in a bottle. She loved to watch the large passenger vessels exit port on their morning walks, having a smaller one she could see from their home would make her smile despite the lack of a cake.

“Lizz, dad’s gotta work tonight.”

“Awe again?”

He carefully carried her up the winding stairs. “Yeah, again, baby. If I ain’t back in the morning, go with Miss Sally down the hall, she’ll see you off to school, give you breakfast.”

“But daddy!” She sat up, “she won’t take me past the boats-“.

“Darlin’, she will.” He laid her down in her bed. “I’ll tell ‘er you’ll want to see them, wave hello to the coast guard from the bridge. She knows how much you love to talk about the harbor, Bub.” He rubbed her nose with his own. “Now head to sleep. ‘Fore I make ya.”

Her eyes peeked over her covers watching him walk to the door. “love you, bub.” He grinned and closed the creaky door.

There was a chest at the end of the hall, it was locked, he pulled the key from his vest. Several varying weapons, a hat, lined with a white ribbon and a jacket consumed the inside.

He stuffed a pistol into the lining of the jacket, a blade between the belt.

[dreamescapeswriting]

Min Yoongi || His Weakness [MafiaAU]

Summary: Your father sells you to Min Yoongi, the Mafia leader…lmao read it bitches

Genre: angst - fluffy? -

Word count - 6,350 (This was supposed to be short lmaooo)

Warnings: MafiaAU, violence is mentioned a lot, abuse is also mentioned so if you’re not comfortable with it please don’t read as I don’t want to trigger anybody as I know how that feels. Swearing is involved a lot too.

A/N: Credit for the edited Yoongi picture @lovies-kpop-fan-fiction​ love you boo boo

You were a lot of things but stupid wasn’t one of them, your father was addicted to gambling and alcohol which wasn’t a great combination given the line of work he was in, you knew he was involved with bad people, you’d grown up with everything going on around you, it was hard to shelter yourself from it, your mother tried her best until the day she had enough and left you alone with him, that was almost six years ago and ever since you’d been the mother of the household. Looking after your father when he came in from one of his missions or late night drinking binges, you cleaned up the house and looked after anyone that came round with wounds that needed healing, it was your job now seeing as though you were the only woman of the house. You’d grown to expect a few surprised being thrown in from your father, like the time he brought home a man with a bullet wound in his arm, telling you, not to heal him, but to make him worse. Pressuring you about how it’ll make you stronger as a person, once you refused that was it, a smack across the cheek, it was nothing to some other things you had received in the past from him.

What you didn’t expect though on a Sunday at 5 am when your father normally stumbled through the door with his suit a mess, his hair in state and eyes starting to shut from the night he’d had, was the front door being booted open and six men rushing into the home aiming guns in every direction until they found you resting on the kitchen island in your short Pyjama pants and a long-sleeved shirt, a mug of tea in your hand as you’d just woken up to start your day off.

“We’ve found her boss.” One of the taller men out of the six came forward, his face covered back a black hood the only thing you could see was his eyes that were staring into yours, you nervously put down the cup you were holding and held up your hands, no clue if they were police or another one of your dad’s friends, but from the way you were acting you gathered, they weren’t friends at all.

“On your knees, hands where we can see them.” A shorter one demanded in a deep voice, you slowly slid down off the counter top and got down onto your knees, bringing your hands to your head and holding them at the back of your skull, you’d seen your father arrested a countless number of times and knew what to do in this situation.

“Boss said to get her in the car and bring him straight to his, blindfold.” The same taller one from before ordered, taking a blindfold from another hooded member and covering your eyes. You heard the metal before you felt it against your skin, the cold handcuffs making you shiver as they were slotted against your wrists, you wanted to call out and ask what was going on but you knew better than to question someone who was aiming a gun at you.

Being thrown against a carpeted floor was not what you had planned for the morning, your knees burnt as you scraped them along the rug, you heard shuffling around you and muffled speaking, you knew you were in a room in someones home that was around thirty minutes away from your own, having counted in the back of the van you were placed in after being taken from your home, in a secluded area because whoever was driving wasn’t used to coming down back alleyways to get here with a van you were in.

“Be careful with her.” Someone barked, you weren’t used to anyone’s voices and you couldn’t tell anyone apart, you heard a door open and close before a chair was moved and people fell into a completely silent, the only thing that could be heard was people breathing.

“This her?” Someone asked in a thick accent, you frowned under the blindfold still confused as to what was going on around you when you heard another voice speak, a voice you knew all too well in the years of him raising you.

“Yes, that’s her.” The blindfold was ripped away from your eyes, the sudden exposure to bright light caused your eyes to water before tightly shutting, having no time to even adjust to it. Slowly you opened them, the light not bothering so much as before, you glanced around the room, six men and your father were all standing around looking at you, while another was sitting in a giant leather chair behind an oak desk, his hands on the desk in front of him studying you. He was dressed in an all-black suit, thick-rimmed black glasses were on his face, you looked down at his neck to spot a rose and tiger tattoo, then back to his face again taking in his facial features, dark eyes that were boring into yours and bleach blonde hair.

“She cooks, she cleans, she’s real housewife material I promise Yoongi sir,” You blinked at your father, Was he trying to sell you off for more money? Or worse drugs? The man at the desk leaned back in his chair and continued to stare at you before directing his attention to your father, it was now that you took in your dad’s appearance, he was knelt on the floor, hands cuffed behind his back, his face badly bruised and bleeding from his nose, lips and a cut above his eyebrow, you’d seen him in worse states but his hair was a mess, messier than if he’d been on an all-night drinking binge.

“She will do until you pay me what you owe me.” All eyes were back on you, yours meeting the man who was sitting in the chair he looked as though he was contemplating what he was about to say before he slammed his hands onto the desk and stood up.

“Take her to her room Jin, don’t talk to her.” He warned giving someone a warning look behind you, you were yanked up by two different arms and you were staring at your father, tears in your eyes as he was uncuffed and sent out of a separate door while you were still cuffed and being dragged away by a man you didn’t know without any explanation as to what was going on, you were being dragged towards one when Yoongi’s hand went up to signal for the men dragging you to stop, they did instantly and you were able to stand up alone instead of having your feet dragged along the floor and receiving more carpet burn. The blonde got up from behind the desk and made his way over to you, he was shorter than the rest of them but not by much, you were still shorter than him, he took a deep breath frowning a little as he came closer to you, pushing a strand of hair behind your ear that had fallen from your messy bun down into your face.

“Don’t start crying, you’re mine now until he pays back what he owes.” The blonde said with no emotion in his voice or his face, he nodded and you were being turned around to walk with the man who he had called Jin before, you were being taken to a set of metal spiralled stairs.

“Don’t worry too much about him, Yoongi…he’s tough but just do what you’re told and there won’t be a problem.” He whispered to you as you reached the top of the staircase coming onto a hallway that consisted of three doors.

“Like you’re doing as you’re told?” You questioned as he spoke to you after being told not to, he scoffed opening the last white door at the end of the hall and ushering you inside.

“I can do what I want, I’m not his prisoner.” He said before pulling the door closed and locking you inside.

“Don’t you think for one second I like having you around here, you’re here because your father is a filthy scum bag who owes me money,” Yoongi spoke as you were on the floor of the kitchen, you’d come down to clean up as he’d told you to and now you were scrubbing the floor on your hands and knees as if you were Cinderella and not an actual human being with feelings.

“So my father should be the one scrubbing instead.” You spat back not expecting him to hear you as he’d left to go into the living room but he heard and came back into the room, picking you up by the scruff of your Pyjama shirt you were still dressed in.

“Did you say something?” You didn’t even flinch, your father had done worse, you just looked down at the floor in silence, knowing not to talk back to people like that, it would only make their anger worse. You’d been here half a day and you were already worse of then you were at home.

“Your father better hurry up with that money, he neglected to tell me about your smart mouth.” With that you were dropped onto the floor, your knees smacking against the tile, you looked down at the floor, he was still standing in front of you.

“While you’re here, I’ll tell you some ground rules. You can go anywhere in the house except my office, I want this place kept spotless at all times, I’m assuming you cook, if not learn, I want food on the table for certain times.” You nodded, continuing to avoid his gaze.

“Understood?” You looked up and you knew he wanted an answer from you, so you swallowed the lump in your throat.

“Yes, Sir.” You managed to squeak out, he nodded before leaving the room and then up a flight of stairs, you looked around the kitchen. The floor was covered in muddy boot prints and a few dirty dishes so you decided to start with those and then go up to your room, hoping to find something to do or change into instead of being stuck in your Pyjama’s the entire time you were going to be there.

Things weren’t terrible at the house, or at least they were better than they were at your home. As long as you stayed out of his way things were fine, you’d only ran into a few problems since being there, the first was a clothes situation…

It had been two days of sitting in the same clothes and you were growing disgusted with yourself, you made a promise to try and find someone who wasn’t Yoongi to help you, except you only knew Jin the one who brought you up to your room and you had no idea when you could ask him about clothes, the only time you saw him he was with the five other men at the dinner table eating the food you cooked for them so it wasn’t as if you could just go up and ask then, it would be rude.

“Here,” Jin said interrupting you from your thoughts, you were currently sat in the window seat of the bedroom you’d been given and a suitcase was pushed further into the room, you slowly got down from the seat and made your way over to it, picking it up and laying on the bed to open, inside was an array of different clothes, from jeans, skirts, shorts, long-sleeved and short-sleeved shirts and dresses with different shoes all in your size.

“Thanks,” You mumbled to him, not wanting to seem ungrateful for the clothes, he shook his head.

“Not from me, Yoongi sent them. He’s sick of seeing you in the same clothes and your dad won’t send anything to him. You’ll pay him back.” You nodded and with that, he left the room, so you began to unpack the bag and put everything away in the wardrobe that was also in the room. You couldn’t complain about the space, it was a big bedroom with an en-suite, everything you could ever need except something to keep you busy when all of the cleaning and cooking was complete, if you were at home you would just walk to the nearby cafe and read but that was out of the question, especially considering the giant brick wall that ran around the house, stopping anyone getting in or in your case, getting out.

The second issue you ran into with Yoongi was being in his way…

You were cleaning up the living room after one of his parties and he came down the next morning for something, you did your best to stay out of the way but you needed something that was behind him, you were going to wait it out but when he saw you standing there and doing nothing he flipped, it was as if a switch went off in his mind.

Days turned into weeks, weeks turned to months and you were still in the same house for 6 months. Things had gotten a little slacker, he was allowing you to go shopping, under the careful watch of one of his men, of course, Jin was taking you at first but all of a sudden that stopped and you were being taken by another man who you’d gotten to know as Hoseok, he was nice. He brightened up your day whenever you went out together, he would take you to the same supermarket for food shopping that had a small charity shop next door that sold books, you stopped yourself from asking to go but he saw you glancing whenever you entered or left the supermarket so he took you over.

“We’ll keep it as our secret, he won’t have to know about it.” He promised you, picking out a book you liked and paying for it. You hid it inside one of the grocery bags for later when you could sneak it up to the bedroom and read over and over again.

More and more time passed and you thought you must have been near the end of your father’s debt or at least he was coming to pay back for you but he never showed up or you’d never heard about it until Yoongi came down the stairs one day pissed about something, you’d just made dinner for his six friends and they were all sitting down to eat, you getting ready to leave because you never ate with them when a sharp slap hit you across the cheek, the blow from it knocking you back onto the floor after you hit the bottom of your back on the kitchen counter.

“What the fuck?!” Jin yelled, both him and Hoseok on their feet while the others all stayed seated, eyes staring at the food in front of them knowing better than to go against Yoongi, but Yoongi never tore his eyes away from you, they were burning into the front of your face while you tried your best to hide the tears that were springing to your eyes.

“Where’s your dad?! Huh?!” He yelled kneeling against the floor and looking at you, but you looked away from him not wanting him to see how much he’d hurt you.

“I asked you a fucking question!” He barked pulling your face forward to face him, your eyes were bloodshot and your cheek was bright red with a slight white mark from his hand print, the rings also leaving indents across your cheek.

“I don’t know, I’ve been here the whole time.” You stuttered out staring back into his eyes, wanting him to believe you but knowing he probably wouldn’t.

“You’re coming with me.” He grumbled pulling you up from the floor by your hair and hauling you through the living room and up the staircase towards his office on the second floor, the only time you’d been in there was the first night you came, you were shoved down onto your knees in front of his desk and the door slammed shut, you flinched a little and he came closer to you.

“Where is your scum bag of a father?” You looked up at him, too afraid to not look at him in case he hit you again, you racked your brain trying to think of all your dad’s hiding spots, places he went when he needed to escape from everything going on around him, when people came looking for him.

“Well!?” You looked down a the floor biting down on your lip before thinking of the one place he would always go.

“If he’s hiding he’s probably in the safe house he owns, it’s just outside of town, looks like a run-down farmhouse…he took me there a few times when he was on the run.” Yoongi stared at you, shocked that you would just give him information so easily without him having to pressure you like he did everyone else.

“He’s nothing but a dirty cheat who runs away when he has no other option…that’s probably why he gave me to you because he doesn’t care about me.” You continued to ramble on nervous as Yoongi hadn’t said anything, he leant back against the oak desk and ran his hand through his bleach blonde locks and you looked at him, his eyes were studying you as you tried desperately not to cry.

“Well you’re a bargaining chip now, if he doesn’t come out of hiding we’ll kill you.” You nodded in agreement with him, you knew not to question people in authority.

“With all due respect Sir…that won’t work, my father he’s never been the loving kind…he’ll keep playing you on saying he’s getting the money but he won’t…You can threaten my life all you want but you would have to threaten something more dear to him than me.” He looked at you dumbfounded for a second, you were just giving him everything he needed to know.

“What’s more dear to him than his daughter?” You resisted the urge to laugh at his question, and you looked at him, he was holding out his hand for you to take, you took it and he helped you stand, allowing you to sit down in one of the leather chairs in front of his desk, him still leaning against it.

“I would start with his men, they mean more to him than I ever could…or maybe the house, he has memories there of my mother before she ran off.” You cleared your throat, the tears that were once threatening to roll down your cheeks gone, the thoughts of being scared of him gone and replaced with the feeling of relief, he walked around to his side of the desk and began taking notes on what you were telling him, the names of your fathers men, the ones you hated most since they all hit you too but not telling him that, then where the address of the farmhouse was.

“You’ll come with me to the farmhouse, to prove something.” He stated, closing his notebook, the door to the office opened and in walked Hoseok who looked rather worried.

“Take her to her room, bring some food for her and make sure those books you’ve been collecting for her keep her entertained.” He said not looking in either of your directions as he turned to look out of the balcony window.

After threatening a lot of your father’s men your dad came out of hiding from the farmhouse, he took one look at you and knew you were to blame for Yoongi finding him. You were standing between Yoongi and two of his men, Namjoon and Jungkook who were both armed heavily, one wrong move and everything would be over, you knew your dad always carried and you’d warned them about it beforehand.

“You’re a little bitch! Couldn’t keep your mouth shut, could you!? Just like your mother!” He screamed in your direction, you didn’t flinch like you would have done before if you were alone with him, instead, you stayed still looking at him as he pleaded to Yoongi not to kill any of his men or the burn the houses down.

“You’d rather save a bunch of men than your daughter?” Yoongi questioned walking closer to your dad and leaving you behind with Namjoon and Jungkook, you watched as Yoongi rolled up his blazer sleeves exposing more tattoos that you didn’t know he had.

“Yes…she’s nothing, just some silly little maid girl. I promised I would get the money but she will do until then right. That was the deal!” He yelled but Yoongi was shaking his head, he cracked his knuckles and you wondered what was about to happen.

“Family is everything.” He told your father walking around the back of him, your father on his knees watching Yoongi walk small circles around him.

“Family is more important than anything else in this world…you should cherish your daughter.” He whispered bending down to your dads’ ear and looking at you, he nodded and Namjoon and Jungkook pushed you to your knees, you screamed as a blade was pushed against your neck.

“Tell me again how she’s nothing to you.” Yoongi egged on, your father looked at you and you stared back at him with pleading eyes, begging for him to say something that would change your mind about what you thought of him all these years.

“She’s nothing.” He spat looking you dead in the eyes, Yoongi sucked on his teeth shaking his head and the blade was removed from your neck, you were yanked back up onto your feet and being moved back into the van.

“I’ll keep her as insurance, but your house and men are all on the line if I don’t get my money soon.” He barked at your dad who was now getting to his feet, you sat in the front of the van in the middle passenger seat in the front and watched as Yoongi climbed in next to you, Jungkook in the driver’s spot and Namjoon in the back.

It had been a month since that day with your father happened and things back at the Yoongi mansion had calmed down, you were allowed to roam freely around the house and gardens as long as you didn’t leave the gates without one of his men accompanying you, and you were allowed more books than before. You were treated less like a slave and more of a family member, it was nice. You finally felt as though you belonged somewhere, but things were getting weirder. Yoongi was accompanying you more and more places with another guard watching you, he’d even taken you to a gallery opening in town which he was funding but the rules were strict, you couldn’t leave his side, not once. Went to meals together out of the house, you had long conversations about your upbringing and your father and it felt as though you were getting along, no more abuse from him, no more forcing you to clean up or cook, you still did those things but it wasn’t forced upon you like it was before. You were even allowed to eat with them at the table, getting to know every single one of his men on a friendly basis.

You awoke one night during the week to a gunshot, you clutched the sheets around your body and looked around the room, you could have sworn blind the shot sounded as though it was right in front of you. You heard another two and you rushed out of the bed throwing the bedroom door open and racing down the stairs, you heard some men talking that you didn’t recognise and then another shot, you squealed holding your hand over your mouth to try and silence it, the voices turning into hushed tones now.

“That would be the maid, sticking her nose in business she doesn’t belong in.” You heard Yoongi snarl, you’d not heard him like that since the night you told him about your fathers’ hideouts, the door swung open a man you didn’t know dragged you inside by your hair dropping you in front of Yoongi who stared at you blankly then back to the man who was still holding your hair.

“She’s a maid? She looks old enough to be a loved one Yoongi…is this the one you’ve had accompanying you everywhere?” You stayed silent and Yoongi was smirking at the men, he looked down at you and shook his head, acting nonchalantly about the fact you were being pulled by your hair, then that’s when you noticed it, blood all over the carpeted floor, your eyes followed the pools and you saw two bodies lying there, one on top of the other. You weren’t scared by it, a little shocked yet but not scared. You’d seen and done worse yourself, remembering back to times when you had to kill someone who came after your dad and you in the process

“Maybe I should keep her seeing as though you took my best men?” Yoongi shrugged his shoulders and you were pulled up and back into the man’s chest, him leaning down so close to your neck you could feel his breath with every word he spoke.

“Make her my little plaything, what do you think Yoongi?” The barrel of a gun was placed against your right temple.

“Maybe I’ll just kill her instead.” Yoongi continued to act as though he wasn’t bothered, or maybe it wasn’t an act. Maybe you’d read too much into the fact he was letting you have all the different types of freedom and taking you out with him.

“Do what you want, she’s nothing. I’ll get another maid in no time.” The man sniggered and the gun was lowered from your head, you stared down at the ground when you were suddenly pulled under the man’s arm and into a side hug.

“You’re coming home with me then doll face, we’ll get you all prettied up and I’ll show you a good time.” The gun was put away and you were being walked out of the office door, you looked back over your shoulder at Yoongi pleadingly but he was avoiding your gaze, staring at the blood puddles and worrying about how he was going to clean it up.

You were on the last step of the staircase when a gunshot rang through the air again the man next to you falling onto the floor with a loud thump, you stayed still too scared to move in case whoever shot him was going to shot, you next, it wasn’t until Jin came running into the hallway to see what was happening you realised Yoongi had shot the guy, you were relieved at first, he wasn’t going to just let you go, maybe you weren’t thinking it was all in your head, maybe he did care. You turned to look at him and he was pissed. Red in the face and staring you, the body by your feet was, being dragged away leaving nothing but a drag mark of blood.

“I told you! Never to come into my office!” He yelled coming down the stairs, you backed away from him hitting the front door and looking at him, he was closer to your now, so close that you could smell the mint chewing gum he had.

“I wasn’t in the office.” You whimpered, as he put the gun away in his pocket.

“Do you have any idea what you’ve just done!? You’ve just left us exposed! Everyone is going to think you’re some kind of weakness to me when you’re nothing but a silly little girl!” He yelled his hand raising and causing you to flinch but it didn’t come into contact with you, it reached into his pocket pulling out his phone.

“You couldn’t just do as you were told, could you?!” He screamed staring at you, you looked down at the ground.

“A weakness! Nothing but a stupid little girl!” He yelled in your face, that was it. You looked behind him and darted up the stairs, the front door heavily guarded but the one door that wasn’t was his office balcony door, you rushed inside climbing out of it and shimming down the drainpipe, you knew you wouldn’t have long to get out of the yard before Hoseok would spot you, you knew their schedule like the back of your hand, he was patrolling the front lawn so you had about three minutes to get out of the back gate and then try and find a way out of surrounding area.

“HOSEOK!” You heard Yoongi yell from the balcony as he watched you sprint towards the back gate, the back door opened and Jin stood there watching as you turned into a faster sprint, making it out of the gate and into the surrounding woods.

You’d been walking for what felt like hours when you heard something behind you, you looked over your shoulder and saw nothing, it was pitch black outside, of course, you saw nothing. You wrapped your arms around your chest, you were dressed in nothing but some thin pyjama’s, why did you do this? You should have just stayed at the house where it was warm. Another noise alerted you and your head snapped around to a light coming from behind you, you darted behind a tree and a car came closer, slowing down, you knew it wasn’t one of Yoongi’s cars or men so you watched as a figure got out of the car.

“You okay miss?” You studied the man for a few seconds, trying to determine if they could be trusted when you couldn’t tell you thought it would be best to leave him.

“Yes…just out for a midnight walk.” You lied, doing your best to sound convincing enough but the man came closer to you, you stepped back, standing on a twig and flinching.

“You don’t seem okay, you lost?” He questioned again, you bit down on your lip, wanting nothing more than to get into his car and be warm but you didn’t know who he was.

“I’m not lost, just walking. Clears my head.” Who would be out in the middle of nowhere in the middle of the night if they weren’t up to anything good?

“Come with me, I’ll take you somewhere nice and warm…we’ll get you a nice hot chocolate and you can warm up.” You shook your head, you knew he couldn’t see you but the way he was going on and on made you anxious.

“I should go back to my boyfriends’ house, he’s probably looking for me.” That’s when you heard it, someone calling out your name in the distance, both your head and the other man’s shot up to look in the direction it was coming from.

“Yoongi?!” You screamed out, praying for it to be him, you would gladly go back to him being mad than being stuck with a creepy man.

“Yoongi? The Yoongi? Interesting.” The man lunged for you, and you sprinted in the direction of Yoongi’s voice, he sounded angry still but you didn’t care, you needed out of there.

“Yoongi!” You squealed seeing him between some trees with a flashlight, the light was shone in your direction and you continued running when you heard a gunshot again, you wanted to cry out when you heard it, you were sick of hearing them tonight.

“Y/N?!” He yelled, all sense of anger gone from his mind and concern rushing through him as he saw you rushing towards him, you collapsed onto your knees in front of him, and the man from before came out from behind you.

“Yoongi…We finally meet.” He spoke, Yoongi’s eyes went from you to the man behind you, he stepped in front of you and took out his gun aiming it at the man.

“What do you want? I just killed off three of your men don’t think I won’t kill you as well.” He barked, Jin and Hoseok were running towards you now and you watched Yoongi as he protectively guarded you.

“So she is your weakness? She comes running out in the middle of the night and you come running after her?” Jin helped you to your feet and wrapped a blazer around your shivering body, Hoseok was now aiming his gun as well.

“Get the goons out of here, this is between us.” Jin and Hoseok took the look from Yoongi and left, leaving you behind. You couldn’t even comprehend what was happening when it happened, shots rang out of both guns, the man in front of you hitting the ground and blood flowing from his head and then Yoongi stumbling backwards, you stared at him and then your eyes met hole in his blazer with blood coming from it.

“JIN! HOSEOK!” You screamed as they weren’t that far away, they came rushing over and you nodded at the body.

“Deal with him, I’ll sort Yoongi out.” You cried, throwing his good arm over your shoulder and walking back with him to the house, he stayed in silence the whole walk.

He sat in his office chair while you dragged a stool to his side, you’d taken off his blazer and shirt to find the bullet had entered his arm missing anything major but still bleeding a lot.

“This might hurt.” You whispered taking the tweezers you’d sterilized and reached for the bullet inside his arm, he hissed and bit down onto his fist as you got it out.

“Hold still.” You ordered taking his arm and trying to look at it but he yelled out at you.

“If you hold still it won’t hurt as much!” You yelled at him, he shook his head.

“If you hadn’t have run away this wouldn’t have happened!” He argued back at you, you stood your ground.

“If you hadn’t scared or yelled at me I wouldn’t have run off!” He rolled his eyes and you did the same.

“You shouldn’t have been near the office.” You scoffed wiping the wound with the antiseptic wash and then grabbing and needle and thread.

“You need to learn to control your temper.” He scoffed back at you and you began sewing the small wound back together, he watched as you bit down on your lip to concentrate on what you were doing.

“Where did you learn to do this?” You shrugged your shoulders, he was calmer now more relaxed as you helped him.

“You know my father, he’s an alcoholic… I learnt to patch up myself and others.” You said giving no example as to what had been done to you in the past, only lifting your top to show the scar where your kidney was.

“Stabbed me because dinner wasn’t on time one night.” You answered letting it drop down and continuing your work, finally finishing and washing it with some more antiseptic wash.

“You don’t deserve that kind of treatment.” You took the bloody bandages and threw them into the fireplace, coming back over and wrapping his arm in some new ones.

“Life’s a bitch.” You said putting the stool away and cleaning up the first aid kit you’d been using.

“No.” He said taking hold of your wrist and stopping you from going anywhere, you looked at his hand and then up to his face, he looked genuinely concerned and you bit down on your lip.

“I know I haven’t been the greatest of people to you but…I want you to know I don’t mean to shout and scream…I just, I have anger issues and then watching him hold you like that earlier…it made me worse, seeing someone else touching you the way I want to, the way I’ve been working my way up to with taking you out.” You stared blankly at him, so it was true. You were his weakness.

“It made me-”

“Jealous?” You finished for him, he nodded sheepishly and you swallowed a lump that was forming in your throat from nerves.

“You don’t need to be jealous.” You whispered taking your spare hand and putting it on his cheek, he leaned into your hand and you smiled softly.

“I’m a bad guy…you shouldn’t care for me.” He reminded you, you stared at him, a small laugh wanting to escape your lips.

“I’ve grown up around worse than this…my father introduced me to this lifestyle a long time ago, if I didn’t have this it wouldn’t feel normal.” You whispered, he surprised you by pulling you down onto his lap, you were straddling him now, his left arm around your waist and his right injured one cupping your cheek making you look at him. You moved your head closer to him, he was frozen with both fear and excitement, you leant in and your foreheads rested against one another.

“Thank you.” You whispered to him, he frowned a little and you smiled softly although he couldn’t see you.

“For what?”

“Saving my life.” You leant down and connected your lips, in all the time you’d known him you never imagined how they would feel pressed up against your own, your brain lit on fire and the warmth spread throughout your entire body, you were addicted after just one small kiss, it was nothing like the books you had read described, it was something more, it was more passionate than anything anyone could ever try to describe into words. His hand moved from your cheek to around your waist to meet his other arm and he pulled you closer, hissing as his arm stung to move so much, you both pulled away and studied each other for a moment, you felt a blush deepen on your cheeks as he looked at you, the once rough and scary Yoongi, who was covered in piercings and tattoos, who killed people for fun was gone and sitting in his place was a softer and more gentle Yoongi who didn’t care about anything right now except you in his arms.

[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.