#im not usually a big souyo guy but this is a very nice fic mav! gold star

[beantothemax]

3 times Yosuke feels he doesn’t belong and 1 time he knows he does 

Yosuke is 12 and living in Tatsumi Port when he realises. It hits him like a punch to the gut, except he thinks a punch would be better in this scenario. 

He realises that he doesn’t belong in this group, all rich and snobbish and definitely shunning him. None of them spare even a second glance as he slinks away, resolving to find the nearest pay phone that’d be still operating at this time of night. 

Eventually he makes a collect call to his mom begging for her forgiveness and quickly explaining that he’d lost track of time before catching the last monorail to the station by his house. His “friends” don’t call. They don’t ask where he’d gone at school the next day. They don’t care, and Yosuke knows. So he stops caring about them.

2. Yosuke is 14 and tired. He’s stopped attending school, too busy preparing to move to a whole new place halfway across the country. Inaba, his mom told him. He’s too tired to put up a fuss about moving. 

His “friends” from school still don’t call. They don’t drop by to offer help with packing. They don’t talk to him when they see him around town. 

His “friends” aren’t really his friends. He knows this. But that doesn’t stop it from stinging any less. He can’t count how many things he told them, how many secrets he’d whispered in the darkness of sleepovers, unaware that he was the only one really saying anything. 

But they also held him when he cried, they listened when he ranted about his dad, they stopped him from punching things when he became angry. 

Silver lining, Yosuke supposes. 

3. Yosuke is 15, and still tired. If anything, it seems to have gotten worse. His bones ache when he moves, his eyes feel heavy with a lead weight he doesn’t remember attaching to them. But his heart has been encased in concrete. 

Chie and Yukiko are nice, absolutely. But he doesn’t mesh with them like they mesh with each other. Because having lived here in Inaba for about a year now, he’s still the school’s exotic attraction. A city boy in a backwaters high school, with slender, gangly limbs and a face that he’d heard other boys describe as “girlish.” 

It’s unfair, really, how some people can blend so well with everyone, while he can barely blend with himself. Music is his only comfort, as pathetic as that is. The blaring from his headphones helps him turn his attention away from what’s bad in his life, and focus on what’s good. Like Chie and Yukiko not constantly making fun of him for how he looks. 

There are good and bad aspects about everywhere, Yosuke has figured out. Chie and Yukiko are good aspects, definitely. 

Yosuke is 17 and living in Inaba when he realises. It hits him like a punch to the gut, except he thinks a punch would be better in this scenario. 

He walks in a field outside Inaba, shoes discarded behind a bush by the roadside. The sky above a deep, dark blue, with black clouds rolling by lazily. A cool breeze drifts by in the warm air, carrying the sweet scent of summer and ruffling his hair. 

Beside him walks Yu Narukami, his partner and best friend. It’s been a year since the Inaba murders were solved, by them no less, and now Yu is back, and Yosuke feels gobsmacked by how much his partner has changed. 

Yu is taller now, the baby fat in his cheeks burned away to make way for handsome features. He’s taller now- Yosuke has to look up to see that Yu’s grey eyes are darker now, more stormy than steely, and his hair has grown out a bit, though it remains the soft grey it was last year. Yosuke finds that the urge to card his fingers through it has only gotten stronger as time passed. 

“Yosuke. What would you say...” Yu begins, turning his head to look at Yosuke. They both stop walking. The sky turns even darker, and Yosuke breathes in the sweet air, listens to the cicadas in his ear. 

“If I told you that my parents are letting me stay in Inaba for this school year, too?” 

Yosuke feels like he’s been punched in the gut twice. Once because his best friend is staying here again, his best friend will be within arm’s reach once again. 

Twice because Yosuke realises he likes Yu as more than just a best friend. 

It’s a terrifying realisation. But it’s one he welcomes. He knows where his place in the world is. He’s known it ever since Yu placed himself in their lives, made himself comfortable in the spaces of their hearts and made residency in Yosuke’s head, whispering soft things that make way for yearning that makes his entire body ache. 

His place is at Yu’s side, so that’s where he places himself. Hugs his partner so tight he hears bones popping into place, slots himself comfortably in the space between Yu’s arm and side, resting his head on Yu’s shoulder. The fabric of his shirt is soft and comfortable, and Yosuke makes a mental note to steal it from his partner the next time he spends the night. 

“I’d welcome you home, partner.” 

holy shit gay people real………………..