#maybe stop acting like trans bodies are disgusting

[queermoths]

hey, cis people! maybe don't talk about top surgery (or any gender-affirming surgery) as being "botched" if a trans person is talking about how our body healed from it!

this is not optional! unless the trans individual in question specifically encourages you to use that language! hope this helps.

[obsolete-stars-if]

Shut up I literally cannot stop thinking about drink your villain juice. I'm writing a snippet IN THE TUMBLR APP. It's all I'm thinking about.

@drinkyourvillainjuice for even daring to make Alistair that good???

And also @elegantunknownphantom BCS i know you will live for the angst.

Alistair x mc (masc, he/him, trans)

You reach for the plastic container. He doesn't even get to say Hi. You look at it, penne pasta, in... Pesto? Alis has been getting creative ever since you rejected the lasagna. It's not that you don't trust him — You know you shouldn't.

You open the container, give it a smell. Doesn't smell poisoned, but not every poison smells. You dig around in it for a bit, no weird clumps or any other oddities. You pull one penne out and hold it up to his face. He gives a bewildered stare, "Well... Hello to you too?"

"Eat." You tell him, pushing the penne further into his face. He lifts his hands in defense and takes the single pasta and he eats it. You close the container and watch his face. Alis swallows after some chewing – It's not dangerous to eat.

Satisfied you allow yourself to clean your fingers. It's not a pretty act, at least you don't think it is. Stick in your mouth and get your fingers clean, however, Alis seems to have a different opinion, watching your lips. You stop and look over. He looks away.

It feels weird in a way. You shouldn't expose yourself to him, shouldn't even think about how he looks at you. He has been a terrible influence, you shouldn't even have touched the pasta at all, you should tell him to leave, never come back.

"Ben?" But by God, when your name leaves his lips, you feel a bit more human, a bit more alive. Like the goop is beaten back, just a little more.

You hum in return. Alis stops for a moment, "Will you get into the program?"

Ah, there it is. The program. Give a man a pinky and he will devour your entire arm – or however that saying goes. Stumbling around the subject has helped in the past, but he has never outright just asked like this, not after the first meeting that is. "Why are you asking?"

"Have you seen the news? It's just– The entire new Altruists? Thing is scary, and I'm concerned with you just living out here-"

You bark a laugh, "You know what you get yourself into in this city. Didn't you come here seeking them out?" You question, your eyes avert, looking around, anything but his upset face, please. "I mean, handing out free pasta to strangers, who knows, maybe you'll hand free pasta out to a parahuman or villain-" Just shut up.

You can hear him upset. "It's this Thorn that concerns me. The way it changed forms, broke those bones, what if it-"

It. That's all you are, isn't it? You knew it too. You were a subject for so long, and just a drop of humanity makes you forget, but your body is disgusting. It's scary. You're scary. You're a monster to all humans. Oh, how it ate you up, from inside out, leaving nothing but a human looking shell, that it inhabits, it's in your thoughts, in every step you take, it is you. And you can't separate yourself. How foolish to think you could. There is no you. It's all it.

"Benedikt?" Alis voice calls.

You don't look up, you don't deserve to look a human in their eyes and pretend to be one.

"I'm fine." You lie.

[brrrkdslek]

not a post i just need to vent a bit.

i remember when i just started middle school, i was super nervous and felt like absolute shit. i didn't know anyone since i transferred from a different primary school so i was absolutely fucked. but i met a few friends and one of them, judy.

judy was a sweet girl and she was a bit awkward and weird, nevertheless it made me grow more fond of her. we spent the entire year together growing closer and doing more things together, i even went to an anicon in cosplay with her, we even became each other's best friend.

but a year later, her change started to show. she said she didn't like the name judy and changed it to eryn, of course i brushed it off and said it's cool. she also cut her hair and looked a bit more different from judy. from then on, judy and eryn became two people.

we were in class when she suddenly told me about getting a binder. at first, i thought she meant a binder as in folder for her notes and worksheets and i was confused. she clarified and said it was a binder for her chest, like the bandage. i didn't make any comments and just took it in. i wasn't disgusted, or happy to be frank. i was just fairly confused, but of course i supported her the entire way.

a while after that she told me about wanting to transition, we were 13-14 at the time so it was really shocking news for me, especially since the place we resided in is not fond of trans people, it made me worried. i told her how it's a tad bit too early for her to make that decision and the journey towards it would be hard. she told me it's fine and she could do it, adding that she felt more comfortable that way.

sometime after, she dropped the news of transferring to a new school. i was shocked and my other friends were too. she said that the workload was too much and she didn't care if she was in a bad school, as long as she was happy. i was a bit reluctant but still supported her, giving her a small smile.

after she changed schools, we talked less but she'd come visit us sometimes after school. a while after i heard from a friends that she changed her name again to quinn, something about being male and female? we met a while after and she told me how she could wear pants for the uniform instead of the skirt like the other girls. i told her it was cool but she said she went back to the shop to but the pants secretly after her parents bought her the skirt uniform.

i was a bit appalled since her mother and i were also close and i knew she was having a hard time with money. she works 5(?) jobs to provide for her and her little brother and also her dog, which she got as an emotional support from her therapy suggestions. i then learnt she wasn't taking her adhd meds and i honestly didn't know what to say, so i didn't.

at that point, me and friends slowly started to distance ourselves from her since she was acting so weird. she was always excited to talk about how the people in her school would ask if she's a girl or boy and she'd act mysterious and not answer. maybe it's just me but i felt that she was using this 'transgender' thing to her entertainment. like she wanted people to question her gender and identity and she was having fun with it.

my friends agreed with me saying it wasn't fair to other transgender people that actually go through so much shit just to he comfortable in their own bodies. she was just playing around and making fun out of being 'transgender' to which i should add is not even true.

quinn then developed feelings for another friend in our group, M, and wrote self-insert fanfics of them. it made M uncomfortable and weirded out so all of us just stopped communicating with her as much as we could.

i was on a cruise one night with my family to celebrate my mom's coworker or something i didn't even know. i had a few too many drinks then and dialled her number. we chatted a bit and i was still drinking, then i suddenly blurted out that i was in love with her, which is not true. i just said it in the heat of the moment and blacked out.

i heard from another friend that i wasn't supposed to know she was in love with M since she didn't want to hurt my feelings. i was a bit angered that moment cause i thought she was being narcissistic, to which it had been two months after the incident. maybe i was being a huge bitch and i was the real narcissist but i was really mad she felt the need to 'care' for my feelings.

she went out with another friend, C, a while later and they had a good chat. quinn asked what she thought about trans people and C replied saying most of them are cool, except for the really weird ones. weird as in toxic and the cringe ones you see on tiktok. quinn got offended and yelled at C telling her trans people are also people and that she was being transphobic. C was incredibly upset and cried to us afterwards.

it was around christmas last year when quinn called me crying, telling me she was sorry for being a bitch and making me and the others hate her. i told her we didn't hate her and we just don't support the things she's doing and saying now.

i created a separate group chat with all the friends including quinn and she apologised to everyone. i thought it would've been resolved but my friends started to hate me and said i was a traitor for telling quinn all the things we said about her, which wasn't true. but they distanced themselves from me and i heavily blamed quinn for it, even thought it wasn't her fault.

some time after new years, quinn's school had a casual wear day and she was telling me how excited she was for it. i scrolled on instagram on that day after school and cringed when i saw her wear a maid dress to school. again, maybe it's just something wrong with me but i couldn't help but feel the second-hand embarrassment, and the fact that she doesn't really have any real friends there makes it more awkward.

i screenshotted the picture and posted it in my close friends, not to make fun of her, but to just let out the cringing feeling i was feeling right then. my other friend, A, saw this and told quinn. they met one day after school and they were talking about how me and quinn were growing more distant from each other and that's when A showed her the picture. A told quinn to talk things out with me and communicate with each other.

i was a bit taken aback when i found a long text paragraph from quinn in my whatsapp just a day later, telling me i'm rude and bitchy for doing that to her and that she didn't want to be my friend anymore. i know calling her cringe was very mean and bitchy on my part and i wish i never did that.

we argued and i told her all my thoughts on her actions up until that point and she just kept calling me transphobic and a traitor. i got angry and told her that if she didn't want to fix things then she could just cut me off, she told me i was a bitch and only lived in my head.

it's been a year or so since this happened but i can never forget about her, not because of what she said but because of how i handled the situation. i was the person who taught her to be herself and do what she wanted but then i stab her in the back and tell people she's cringe and whatnot. i won't make excuses for myself but i really did cherish her and the friendship we had.

maybe this was also her fault, or maybe entirely mine but who knows? i just feel really sorry i made her feel that way, when i was the one she considered best friend. i hate myself for this, for ruining us. but i'm too much of a coward to apologise, when i know in my gut she was wrong on some parts.

maybe this is how it is, we meet and say goodbye. we teach each other things the other had never known. and when the time comes, we part, one way or another.

[lewyn-martell]

after s1, officially totally on board w/ iwtv. adored it much more than i thought. louis i am in awe of you. daniel i am in love with you. lestat you are the greatest little guy ever. armand your ways entrance me. i really really liked this show, but i want to point out some criticisms just once and then put them to bed.

back when s1 was airing i decided not to watch it because i knew how the story went and knew it would be a louis/lestat show and i never cared about it in the slightest. plus i saw the decision to age up both claudia and daniel the interviewer and i was very annoyed.

on claudia's end because you take away an incredibly fucked up situation that unfortunately is immensely resonant. being trapped in a body you can't do anything about to change. having an terrible relationship with your own sexuality because of it since you are inevitably at odds with the attraction you want other people to have for you and that is not something anyone can control. how to reconcile with being with someone that's attracted to what you absolutely hate about yourself? something that could make you see them as a pedophile? am i just a fetish? maybe people aren't ready to hear this but as a trans person (especifically non binary androgynous - wanting to achieve plenty of unachievables regarding my body) this would be Golden to explore.

and while they make it a point in the show, claudia has clearly went through much of puberty already. her biggest problems concerning it in a practical sense are her small boobs & stature and that she can't grow a bush lmao as if there aren't millions of women in their 20s who look incredibly young and have to be carded at bars. (case in point isn't the actress herself like 20?)

it's completely understandable that it would be hard to cast someone who looks borderline prepubescent (or maybe even cast an actual kid and have them play out very challenging and mature scenes), but it was a disappointment all the same. in fact i think - even disregarding all that, her character was still definitely not as strong as it should have been.

the fact that they had her acting like a young child when she came into their lives when she was a teenager with a pretty significant chunk of life already lived bothered me. her character already felt hollow. and the inconsistencies regarding her troublemaking ways and its consequences (including personal ones) depending if they wanted her more on louis' side or not. the journey her character takes, her decisions, NONE of them could be felt as strongly as any of the ones from louis' character.

and btw? kind of annoying how plenty of the scenes between the trio were Amazing by themselves (and with amazing performances), but the emotional configuration to fall back was not really there. why does louis love claudia so much as a PERSON?? we know why he decided to save her. but why did he continue to be as taken?? and more and more each year? i don't want to have to read some meta about claudia representing a liberation he can only hope to ever achieve etc etc. that's just playing with known themes. i want to actually SEE that on the screen. the personal moments that draw them to one another.

and sorry, like. not to be disgusting. but everyone knows that the thing between louis and claudia and lestat on all ends is not exactly strictly platonic. you've already aged her up so people can stomach claudia's whole... thing. now you're not even gonna do the weird gothic incest thing?? instead of just giving a couple wink wink nudge nudge-ing how much more fucked up this could be? (but actually not. we won't go there for real guyssss). this is a maximalist melodramatic gothic show!! why would you choose to be cagey about stuff that would make it more interesting??

claudia and lestat on the other end could have bordered on actually fascinating and being legitimately catnip to me. if they stopped being kind of one note about all the same-y configurations of "it's the two of us now (either louis and claudia or louis and lestat) and this one on the corner". i don't want to say there were NO moments of interesting dynamic (potential) shifts because they tried A Bit but like. maybe a couple times?? hunting together and the underlying jealousy of claudia loving louis more than her own maker (who is also narcissistic) does not Make It for me.

i want to see both why they love and why they hate her. louis should have good reason to see her through such rose colored glasses even when she's much more of a killer than lestat and clearly grew up just as screwed up. i understand he is an unreliable narrator and is putting her on a pedestal out of guilt, but both his true adoration (which should be there by itself with plenty of evidence of Why it's there, and only made more strong with the guilt) and those sparks of actual dissent between them should be more present. ditto for claudialestat. we don't have only louis' pov, we have claudia's too. we should be able to see both his love and his hatred for her in equal measure instead of this constant underlying feel that he is just enduring her in his life for louis' sake while having some fun once in a while. i love the fact that she is a formidable opponent to him, but i want her to be more than an opponent. i wish the trio was as entangled and fucked as it should be, but i found myself liking the dubai trio MORE... the one that has considerable less screentime and in which one party was constantly in the background. but the new orleans trio is like. lestat obsessed with louis. louis obsessed with claudia. and claudia a big question mark as to her actual character drive & nuances.

that also brings me to how disappointing it is for me that lestat is so LouisPilled all the time. he meets him once and becomes obsessed with him. i already knew there was a big chance i wasn't going to care about louis/lestat since i knew the gist of it, and unfortunately i was right lmao. i LOVE them both as characters. which makes it even more sad that i can't love them as a couple. i like toxic dynamics as much as the next person, but they're only as fun as the actual pull between the two characters. they are attracted to each other, sure. and for louis there is much reason for him not being able to leave lestat. but in a romance-sense? especially from lestat's end... well, i don't see it. it makes sense that louis himself wouldn't narrate all the little things that keep lestat with him, but this is still a Romance. and two people simply attracted to each other doesn't make it a very compelling one to me.

well to end this on a good note, the other thing that i said at the start that annoyed me (aging daniel molloy) was ONLY because i thought a byproduct of that would be to remove the tension (as in, sexual, romantic) i already liked between louis the vampire and daniel the interviewer. but knowing not only how they met, but plenty about s2 already i'm happy to say how wrong i was about that :D

[prodigal-explorer]

anaroceit week - day four - it's alright

@anaroceitweek

prompt: rom-com/everyone is trans

relationship: platonic (could be interpreted as romantic/pining) anaroceit

word count: 1.7k

(cw -> transphobic parents, self-hatred, gender dysphoria)

---

“I thought we told you to stop using that name with your teachers.” 

Janus froze as he watched his parents scroll through his computer, unable to move as he did nothing but stare. He should have known not to leave his screen open while getting a glass of water. By now, he should have learned that his parents didn’t consider Janus deserving of any sort of privacy. 

“I did stop,” Janus lied through his teeth. “Mr. Diaz just forgot, that’s all. He’s really forgetful sometimes.” 

“What made you even come up with such a dumb name anyway?” Janus’ father asked, poison in his voice. “Janus. The name we gave you is much more beautiful.” 

“Maybe I don’t want beautiful,” Janus muttered. “Maybe I just want something that’s me.” 

“Your melodramatics are getting old,” Janus’ mother said. “You’re seventeen years old. You need to start acting like an adult. I don’t care what your silly little friends are doing, ruining their bodies and their reputations with all this stupid, disgusting, “trans” stuff. But you aren’t getting pulled down with them. They’re never coming over here again.” 

Janus flinched, but upon hearing his mother's words, an idea popped into his head, and he looked over at his window. No, he tried to tell himself. Too risky.

“Yes, ma’am,” he said. “Can I please finish my homework? It’s due at midnight tonight.” 

“If this happens again, your laptop is being taken,” Janus’ father warned. “You can do your schoolwork the old fashioned way. That’s how your mother and I did it, and we turned out just fine.” 

With that, they left, and Janus was finally able to breathe again. He went and deleted the email from Mr. Diaz after reading its contents, and then deleted everything else in which he was called by his true name. As Janus watched his deadname flash across the screen more times than he could count, he started to feel a deep, unstoppable self-hatred collect in his stomach. 

This wasn’t fair. 

He tried so hard to be who his parents wanted while also being who he truly was. But the two things were impossible to balance, and Janus was starting to wonder if he would have to just pick one. There was no way to make everybody, including himself, happy, and maybe it was time to just stop trying. It was getting too hard to hold everything together; to keep every secret and hide every bit of contraband. 

Before Janus could stop himself, he found himself tearing his pillowcase off his pillow, shoving a toothbrush, his meds, and his most masculine set of pajamas in. Today, after all, was definitely a masculine day, much to his parents’ disappointment. Sure, Janus didn’t mind presenting as feminine sometimes, but honestly, he felt much more at home when he was able to shift and transition how he presented depending on what made him feel the most euphoric on any given day. And the least dysphoric. That part was important too. 

The last thing Janus grabbed was hidden at the bottom of his closet, underneath his bin where he kept his socks: his pronoun pins. The ones he grabbed to wear said “He/Him”, but he took the other two just in case he felt the need to change it out at some point. 

It wasn’t like Janus to go to anybody’s house without texting first, but this was an emergency. After a very risky adventure of climbing out the window and jumping into the nearest bush, Janus was off to the Mendozas. He was just desperate to clear his head and get one night away from his control freak parents. He needed to be somewhere where he could just be himself, without being scared to death of being discovered. 

And the Mendoza house was the best place Janus could think of to do just that. 

Carla had told Janus that he was free to come over whenever he wanted. God, he hoped that she wasn’t just being polite. Carefully, and starting to regret such an impulsive decision, Janus knocked on the door with a timid reluctance. 

It wasn’t Carla or Remus who opened the door. Of course it had to be Roman’s bright, shiny eyes that looked into his and his goofy smile that appeared when he realized that it was Janus he was looking at. 

“Janus!” Roman cried out, “Oh my gosh, are you here for a sleepover?? No way, I was just thinking about inviting you and Virgil over! I would invite Logan too, but tonight’s star-gazing night, and I wouldn’t wanna distract them from that.” 

“True,” Janus hummed nervously, shifting weight between his right and left, causing him to sway awkwardly. “So…does that mean it’s okay for me to come over for the night?” 

“Of course!” Roman said, “Come in, come in! You can put on a movie in the living room if you want.” 

A smile grew on Janus’ face. He loved movies, especially when he was watching them with Roman and Virgil.

“I might just have to take you up on that,” Janus teased softly, ruffling Roman’s hair before going to sit down on the familiar couch. 

Carla was sitting on the recliner, typing on her laptop. She smiled kindly at Janus, and the action made Janus feel a hundred times calmer, somehow. Carla always seemed to have that effect on people, and it was mystifying how she did it. But at the same time, it made perfect sense. Janus figured that anybody who stepped up to the plate of being Roman and Remus’ foster mother had to have some tricks up their sleeve when it came to comforting. Though Roman came across as fearless, Janus was one of the only people who Roman allowed to see in his most vulnerable, fear-stricken moments of honesty, and he was certain that Carla had seen even more than Janus had. 

Curling up into a ball, hugging his knees to his chest, Janus picked up the remote and surfed through all the different streaming surfaces. Rom-coms were a guilty pleasure of Janus, and a very un-guilty pleasure of Roman’s, so Janus figured that it was a safe genre choice. When he finally settled on Candy Jar, Roman came over to sit next to him, but he gave Janus a decent amount of space, clearly unsure of how close Janus was comfortable with him being. 

“Virgil said he can stay the night too!” Roman disclosed with a grin, rocking back and forth on the couch while swinging his legs. “It’ll be the best sleepover ever.” 

“Yeah,” Janus said, starting to relax just a little more. “The best.” 

He pressed start on the movie, but didn’t let it play, wanting to wait until Virgil came around. His stomach was still tumbling, thinking about the inevitable flurry of phone calls and text messages he would get from his parents when they found out that he was gone. Luckily, Janus wasn’t ever dumb enough to tell them Roman’s address. If they tried looking for him, they wouldn’t even know where to start. But even so, the thought of seeing their faces, hearing his deadname get spat at him like venom, made Janus want to curl up into the blanket Roman had passed to him and hide inside forever. 

An arm looped around Janus’ shoulders, squeezing him ever so gently, and reminding him that he wasn’t there. Roman didn’t have to ask. He was the first to admit that he wasn’t the smartest, but in a way, he was. He got people in a way that Janus could never understand. It wasn’t exactly like he could read their minds, but he always seemed to have a trick up his sleeve to make everyone in the room happy. Maybe it was just a part of who he was, or maybe it was something he carefully practiced. Either way, Janus closed his eyes, trying to bask in Roman’s warm existence. 

A few minutes later, the doorbell rang. Janus jumped, and Roman leapt to his feet to get it. Virgil bumbled his way into the living room, his body hunched over and his eyes vacant and tired. Janus sat upright immediately, leaning forward on the couch to try and get a better look. 

“Virgil, are you okay?” he asked. “You look horrible!” 

“It’s- fine…” Virgil mumbled, sitting down beside Janus, still holding his stomach. His ears were tinged red. “It’s nothing. Reall- ow. Oww, fuck-...” 

“Did you get stabbed??” 

“No!” Virgil cried out, finally tearing his hands away from his stomach. Perfectly devoid of injury. “I’m just on.” 

Janus’ eyes widened in understanding, and then softened in pity. He knew how hard this time was for Virgil, and really, for all three of them, it was challenging. Janus could say he was lucky because he sometimes felt feminine during these days, while Roman and Virgil had no source of euphoria anywhere, knowing that their bodies were betraying them, and doing something that didn’t match who they truly were. It was hard to even think about, much less endure and talk about. 

“I’ll get you a heating pad and some chocolate,” Roman said. “Do you want the racecar one?” 

Virgil groaned before nodding. “Yes please,” he mumbled through gritted teeth. 

The racecar heating pad at this point was a Mendoza family tradition. Roman used it for his cramps, and Virgil and Janus eventually started using it for theirs too. Silly as it was, it made the whole ordeal feel just a little less dysphoric and a lot more lighthearted. Janus pressed play on the movie as soon as Roman came back with the warm heating pad and a big bowl of fun-sized chocolates. 

“Ugh, I hate rom-coms,” Virgil joked, wrinkling his nose in mock disgust. “They all have the exact same plot.” 

“No, this one’s different, I swear!” Janus reassured. “It’s funny. You’ll like it.” 

“Both of you be quiet, I wanna hear the movie!” Roman cried out with a laugh, resting his head on Janus’ shoulder. 

Maybe things sucked right now, and Janus didn’t even want to think about what it would be like at home tomorrow after sneaking out. But at least in this moment, it was alright. Roman’s arm went around Janus once again, and the heat from Virgil’s heating pad warmed Janus’ leg, and Janus had forgotten how good Milky Ways were since his parents never allowed candy in the house. 

And Virgil’s cramps were killing him, and it was obvious that Roman was worried sick. 

Things weren’t perfect. But they were alright. And that was good enough for Janus.

[wellgreathereiam]

You know when a cis person imagines you to be cis too, so they specifically imagine your body looking cis or they imagine you having had a cisgender past and in that context they know how to relate to you effortlessly, but when they learn you are trans, and they act like they don't know you at all, like trying to be so open-minded that they over correct into acting like they can't possibly expect me to relate to or meet the expectations they have for a cis man, when in fact before they knew me as trans, they knew ME because my self image and their mental image of me were very much the same, but when they learn just one thing more, suddenly they know nothing.

Like the worst part of being outted for me is suddenly being very very alone and unrecognizable in the eyes of someone you considered yourself as close to, someone you were really making a connection with, someone lighting up to tell you something and then shutting down when they remember you're trans so they stop talking to you as much bc it's confusing them and hurting you and they cut their feelings out of how they talk to you and now suddenly someone who used to be warm and funny with you is just going through the motions of what they do with you, they're hollow, blank, distant, sure he fills a role in my life before but that's all he is to me, that role, we're not close, I-dont-know-him, he's-nobody-to-me. And it's like what if they're right about me?! Maybe my life is unrelatable and worthless and one huge awkward silence in a conversation and my body is disgusting and disappointing and untouchable, undesirable. It's easy to believe that! To believe they're right when that's who I spend my time around.

But I'm not!!!! They didn't treat me that way before they knew! I'm not the problem in this relationship!! I am worth knowing, nothing about how I'm living justified them separating me from them... In fact I think they're embarrassed of themselves when they talk to me. Like the idea that they could be just like me bothers them. That they could imagine themself in my life bothers them. That they could as easily grown up just like me. I think that disturbs them. Like I would be easier to understand and talk to if they could just comfort themselves in the knowledge that my life and perspective is completely foreign to them, and therefore could never happen to them, then they'd never have to worry about being transgender themself.

[emergetransformed]

don’t have a gender bc a prerequisite of identifying or not with your assigned gender is like, people ever reading you as that in the first place. my experience was “horror at the fact that I wasn’t enough like a girl and that made me disgusting and unloveable” >>> “everyone around me that I cared about then becoming gay and trans and like, NOT considering me disgusting and unloveable” the way I want to look or act is determined by other people lol my gender is other people and it feels 100% right and true but it doesn’t feel like. I’ve had the same experience as pretty much anyone else and that’s weird

like I used to want boobs and now I’m mostly like thank god that didn’t happen? literally wished in a mirror at 11 or 12 not to get them because it Sounded Inconvenient and then I FUCKING DIDN’T? and then I rued that day for years once I realized it made me a A Freak. and then stopped caring again when as before mentioned everyone around me became gay and trans and I was like “wow I don’t have to care???? thank fucking god” though I still have moments like What is wrong with my body lol but they’re not shame or dissatisfaction anymore they’re just like “???that’s weird? I am a hypochondriac” also lol at “uh that sounds really inconvenient” maybe my gender is autism

[kakashihasibs]

Is it ok to ask you gender-related questions? Because I’m kinda stuck in a phase where I’m questioning my gender a lot and idk what to do about it tbh. And you seem to have yourself figured out and you’re confident in your gender and you know who you are, and idk maybe you have some advice for someone who’s questioning. If you don’t feel comfortable answering this or giving advice, totally ok too, just ignore the ask, I don’t want to overstep any boundaries

Ur all good! I'm more than happy to talk about gender/trans stuff! ^_^ my only worry is, no matter what i say i might not be able to help you >.> bc at the end of the day only you can know these things about yourself, and the rest of us can only take you at your word.

So! I'm going to start with gender doesn't have to be a big commitment! If you say one thing today, you can say another thing tomorrow and it doesn't make either any less true in the moment you said them! Or! You just can be wrong and that's okay. There no harm committed against anyone if you end up being wrong about your gender at some point. It doesn't hurt me, a trans guy, if you say ur a trans guy and then realize ur not actually a trans guy.

Like what harm could possibly happen there that's caused by you? You took up resources? What resources? A few months of testosterone? An appointment or two with a therapist? Okay then should i be mad at the person who thought they were having a heart attack but turns out it was a panic attack instead? Should i be angry at them for causing me to wait an extra hour in the waiting room bc they guessed wrong? No that's fucking stupid.

My waiting an extra hour so someone could be taken care of isnt some terrible harm against me. Me waiting an extra month for my gender therapist appointment bc one person guesses their gender wrong isn't going to keep me from transitioning. A month or two extra wont kill me. I'm more than happy to wait if it means some else gets the care they needed in that moment. So anyway there's no harm in being wrong! Life isn't a zero-sum game.

Even if you think you might want to do something like HRT you can /try/ and stop if it ends up not for you. You can try and stop just about anything. Surgeries are harder to undo but no impossible.

I know people act like you're potentially ~mutilating~ or ~ruining~ yourself if you do anything that makes you farther from the cis ideal but that's based in cissexism and fucked up beauty standards. There are many many cis people who will have the features you might gain from HRT without ever having touched a hormone in their life. They're not "ruined" they're not "ugly" or less important or disposable or whatever fucked up wrong shit people might say.

So take the pressure off of yourself! Think about unpacking any beauty standards that might make you uncomfortable with experimenting with gender.

Early on I actually planned to never go on testosterone bc i was afraid and frankly disgusted by the idea of having body hair, but i already had dark coarse body hair. Yeah i was afraid of something i already had 🤦 bc i hadnt let go of white/western centric standards of beauty.

Also the very thing i was so worried about is what I'm happiest about now! I love having body hair 😌

You dont have to do anything you dont want to. Okay so ur a trans guy now cool! But you like ur boobs and dont want top surgery? Awesome wonderful amazing. A trans woman who likes having a dick? Excellent. Trans and too fucking lazy to do... anything? Whatever my bud it's all good bc your presentation if whatever you want to make of it.

You can start with trying on different clothes or you can jump straight to HRT (if you have a chill enough prescriber that is x_x). You can take things and leave things. Start something then stop it a day or week or 20 years later.

Bodily autonomy is bodily autonomy. That should be the basis of all of your experimenting. You want to make your body, yourself, you. Your home. Even if you question and try stuff out but decide you're cis then at least your know for sure and you're cis on purpose now 😌

Whatever you decide it must be your choice. You can go as fast or as slow as you want. Make your body yours ^_^

So tl;dr 1) take the pressure off of gender. It's not a one time commitment 2) you harm no one by being wrong 3) recognize your internalized cissexism and challenge it. 4) it's your body, life, and gender. Do with it as you will.

[strangejellyfishluminary]

Kraken

I am so very tired of performing endlessly for the world

I am tired of not being masculine enough to be queer

I don’t feel like a woman but the world keeps calling me

Miss. Girl. Little Lady. Have a nice day, Ma’am.

I smile. Act like it doesn’t bother me, but

Every time I’m misgendered the pressure builds inside

I want to scream but that’s not polite

That’s not ‘ladylike’ and it’s not constructive 

But when people ignore my identity

I don’t feel like constructing relationships

I don’t feel like building bridges with people

That continuously treat me like I’m subhuman

Like, i don’t deserve to pee in peace in public

Like, my existence is a phase or trend

As if I’d choose this life of 

‘Not vaguely masculine enough’ to be truly androgynous

‘Not gay enough’ to really actually be pansexual

‘Making too many sex jokes’ to be asexual

‘Not trans enough’ to be genderqueer

‘Not dating enough women, trans, nonbinary people’

To be a part of the LGBTQ+ community

‘Not out to my family’ to be valid

‘Not visible publicly enough’ to be proud of my identity

‘Not struggling enough just to exist’

Who are you to tell me to keep my head up

When I’m barely treading water at times

Gasping for breath, panic at the discovery

That people i thought were ally’s

Have left me out to dry, alone and parched,

Lips chapped from begging to be seen

To be heard, to be acknowledged as a real human being

I am not your unicorn, mystical creature of pure love

I am the kraken, being crushed in the depths of the dark

Vilified for defending myself and being misunderstood

Miss gendered. Miss taken for someone that won’t fight back

But I’m so tired of fighting, of being alone, feeling isolated

From my community. Beaten down, I’m so tired,

You have no idea how tired, I just want to curl up

Stop the fighting, stop trying, stop hurting

Stop the pain. I just want some peace

Some rest. Why can’t I just rest

I need some rest from this madness in my head

I feel so lost, lonely, separate from friends and loved ones

Even amongst this crowd of love and support

I can’t feel it, it doesn’t seep in, this warmth can’t penetrate

The ice barriers of fear, words of comfort get lost

In the swamps of sadness, I cling to Artax, my childhood,

As it sinks and disappears, like my last fuck about life

I clung to my last fuck, hoping that maybe someone would see

Someone would notice, I’m trying, I keep trying

But I just don’t know if I can try anymore!

That’s it, I think I’m done, it’s too late.

You’re too late, no! I won’t accept, I can’t accept,

No! You pity me, that’s the only reason you came back

You don’t actually love me, I don’t believe you!

I can’t believe that you would actually love me!

I’m broken, oh so very broken, and it’s too late to fix this

To fix me, I’m at the end of the rope and dangling

I’m so tired and so sick of being a burden

I just wanted to be loved, accepted, is that so much to ask for?

I used to love myself, but now I don’t even recognize this person in the mirror

Who is that, ugly, pimply, sweaty, nervous wreck!

That red faced, snot nosed, unwashed nasty bitch

She, no, I mean, they haven’t showered in weeks

Disgusting cunt, when’s the last time you brushed your teeth

I can’t look at you, but that doesn’t matter

I can’t even get out of bed or take my meds

Sleeping is about all i have energy for anymore

Waking up from uncertain dreams and nightmares

Where life is one continuous gauntlet of taunting homophobes

And never having a body that fits my identity

And never having friends or family use my name or pronouns correctly

And never feeling safe to exist as my true authentic self

How can I get out of this hell? 

By creating a chosen family, and choosing who gets to be included

Blood related or no, loved ones that respect my identity

Regardless of if they can or want to accept my identity,

Those people that choose to treat me as human,

Those people that don’t call me by my dead name

Those that correct themselves politely

Those that make the effort to use my proper pronouns

That is the bare minimum

And the bare minimum that I can do?

Because the only person I can control is myself

Is to take each week, each day, 

Each hour, minute, second and moment

One step at a time. Deep breath.

Focus. Stop. count the colors in a painting.

Stop. the pain won't stop. Deep breath.

Count to ten. One. two. Three. Four.

I can do this. I can do this.

Five. six. Seven. You’ve got this, Miss Universe.

Eight. Nine. ten. Deep breath. 

Focus. What kind of future do you want to build?

Deep breath. Eat. drink water. Take your meds.

Focus. Spend time with healthy supportive friends.

And I stress that they must be healthy and supportive!

Deep breath. It’s okay to walk away from 

Unhealthy, maladaptive, coping skills as well as

Those codependent or toxic relationships.

Deep breath. It’s okay if you lose some friends.

You will lose some friends BUT 

You will keep the ones that are healthy

The ones that create communities

Be they queer, straight, able bodied, disabled

Whatever form, culture, gender, sexuality, nationality

These communities we create and are a part of

Are full of human beings ready to provide acceptance and love

Community is such a strong supportive resource

Reaching out, spending time with my queer community,

My veteran community, my college community,

Communities that sometimes overlap, 

Communities that I can rely on for support

[sols-thoughts]

Gender sexuality personal label rant

Trying to think of how I would describe my gender and sexuality is a bit hard for me.

As far as sexuality goes I would say I am much more attracted to afabs. But mostly because I am afab myself, and would not want to be in a sexual relationship with someone who's reproductively compatible with me.

It's not a matter of if I find a set gender or sex more attractive, because I find basically all types the same amount , but in different ways? Like there are nice things about all forms of presentation and physical features .

But like the only thing that would stop me from being with someone who's amab is the risk of pregnancy

I've always found the idea of pregnancy to be very, disturbing? And the idea of it happening to me would be just , disgusting feeling? Like something very alien and wrong.

I do remember as a kid, going through afab puberty , that also felt very wrong.

Like no specific reason for it, but I found the physical changes to be very wrong. And something I wanted to hide at all costs, even going as far as to double up sport bras to compress my chest , and when that hurt too much, just started wearing baggier clothing.. and layering clothing in a way that was downright dangerous in the 90-100° summers I lived in. (Binders weren't exactly a thing that I know about, I'm not even sure they were a common or available thing)

But even all of that was more comfortable that seeing myself that way.

I don't know how I would've handled amab puberty, but I don't think it would've been that bad. Physically I would've much preferred it.

That being said, I can be very feminine, in a lot of ways. I like bright colors now,I consider all clothing by the comfort and the look of it.

I do wear dresses, but not as a feminine thing. But really because it's more comfortable, and it's a good lazy outfit ngl. It's comfortable in the summer, it's breezy.

I also like masc clothes, I like muted colors, and dark colors.

And I never really understood completely why clothes were divided that way.

I do dress and present feminine nowadays, but that's mostly because I see it as a form of masking .

I do different types of masking, socially, emotionally, my type of speech i use around different types of people. It's just something I've had to do for a long time to fit in. And this feels the same.

Just like acting a certain way publicly is expected, presenting a certain way is also expected.

Especially in the more conservative area that I live in , it's just something because It feels more important right now to stay safe.

I feel like I would much prefer to be physically amab , but I am not. And I feel like even if I did try to change myself to look more like how I would prefer to look, it still wouldn't work.

So I'm not very sure how I'd categorize myself, and that has made it difficult with a community where it's so important to know ALL your labels to categorize yourself and who you're attracted to, or else you're somewhere you're not supposed to be be.

It's why I really just prefer to use the umbrella term "queer", just cause it's something that is nonspecific and something id personally find more safe to use at risk of being in spaces I "don't belong in".

I'm afab and more attracted to afabs, but I wouldn't consider myself a lesbian,because I don't feel like a woman?

But I also wouldnt label myself as gay?

You'd maybe think gender fluid because I dress differently depending on how I am feeling. But I don't really see clothing as something that has a gender.

Trans is something that seems pretty specific, but it doesn't feel like it fits. Yes I'd like to physically change to something more amab, but I don't feel the aesthetic or social connections that seem to come with it. It's just me wanting to change my body to feel more comfortable with how I look.

Me not being too up to date with everything , mostly comes from issues I've had socially in the community with just feeling alienated from it for years because I don't really understand the labels. So I've just been doing my own thing.

So far I've just been using agender, bisexual they/them cause that's really the closest thing that fits.

Ideally I'd like to just be, and not really have to think about what gender I am. And physically look how I want to look. Which personally would be to look amab and have those physical features and parts. I'd like to dress however I want, taking bits and pieces of just, whatever I'm vibing with at the moment.

If I didn't have the tokophobia I worry about I think I would be completely bisexual .

I don't even care what pronouns people use for me, just they/them is preferred. But that's not what this is about.

Honestly I'm not sure what I'd consider myself if I really think of it deeply

[faggotron9000000]

idk I'm a trans radfem and so is my radfem mtf gf. dworkin has stated she is pro-transsexual so why can't I be a trans radfem? just because the dominant ideology on tumblr is ew yucky trans doesn't mean that we are all like that

you're right, dworkin and other radfems did make room in their ideology for trans women, in spite of being wrong about many other things. for what it's worth, i also argue with other trans people about why they should be able to tell the difference between a radical feminist, a terf, and a transphobe, because i recognize those things are not necessarily synonymous. i care about radical feminism at all because one of my favorite authors is a trans lady named andrea long chu, who doesn't claim to be a radical feminist but wrote one of my favorite essays, which was in part about how her own transition was inspired by her politics and radical feminist writers. i think she's expressing an emotion that's more common than a lot of trans people want to give it credit for, and which radical feminists with decency would celebrate-- to see "men" forsaking their maleness right down to their bodies is like, ~the radicalest feminism~!! i get why that's compelling, and there are plenty of trans ladies and lady-adjacent-types who feel empowered by that, and i wouldn't want to take that from them-- but.

right now i'm arguing with radfems who are aggressively intense about telling me that i do not have a voice in political issues that pertain to me, specifically abortion, and who are compulsively calling all trans women rapists, men in drag, etc-- when radical feminism is how they justify transphobia, then radical feminism gets to bear the weight of their failure.

i wouldn't be making these arguments tho if i didn't think that radical feminism was... at least an avenue to a more radical position in favor of things like bodily autonomy and more materialist gender analysis, if not capable of promoting those things itself. like that's definitely what i got out of reading work by radfems and their fans, but it seems like a lot more cis assholes are into it because they simply think trans people are disgusting and stupid and want to justify their desire to be cruel to anyone who isn't a [cis] woman.

your sisters gotta get over this transphobia jag, and all of yall gotta stop acting like trans men are either idiots or traitors, it's merciless and transphobic and in the last decade it's only gotten worse. maybe you can start a radical feminist movement that's about body autonomy instead of hating trans people, anything is possible! but let's not pretend that the radfem scene of the last 50yrs hasn't been overwhelmingly, violently transphobic and loudly against us the moment they think they can get away with it.

[dirk-has-rabies]

Rabies Pride

so as some of you may have known (or dont if not hi welcome) I created rabies pride as a movement for trans autistic individuals to embrace who they are back in 2017. only a handful (maybe 30 ppl) used it and then one day a kid named spencer (rabidloving) was memed on after one of his OBVIOUSLY SATIRE posts about wanting rabies and being rabiessexual went viral. this completely derailed my movement and destroyed all the foothold it had because people would rather make fun of a mentally ill child who finds comfort in something “strange” than take a step back and let people cope how they wish with satire posts about themselves. (sorry for the petty im still so mad about what happened with him) They ended up chasing him off the website to the point where he had to change his name and make his accounts private. disgusting on this websites side.

during this time ppl were making flags and memes and at first they were playful and nice and ppl could still use rabiosexual and rabies pride in a bit of a similar way as my original definition as they used it to basically mean that they were proud of being someone who was “feral” or highenergy. but even then most the memes were laughing AT the ppl using it and not WITH as most of us thought. 

so here is the original definition and background of rabies pride that i created:

Rabies pride is for Autistic Trans ppl. Its for all the people that were treated like animals, treated like they were contagious or had a deadly disease by classmates/siblings/anyone just for being “too loud” “too hyper” “too close” “too much” due to having autism and being openly trans. for all the people that cant be taken seriously due to things they cant control and where born with. Rabies pride is a movement to accept yourself and find others just like you who agree that you shouldnt have to act like a “normal person” to be able to be yourself. We believe that you are perfect as you and however you grow or expand or learn or love is perfect for you and it doesnt matter how others feel about your identity or brain or self. THATS what Rabies Pride is about. so think twice next time you make a meme about it or make fun of someone using it.

The background of it was back in 2017 a couple of friends and i in college started trying to think of a way to help ourselves feel safer as ourselves and not be ashamed of who we couldnt help being. now most of us were furries and all of us were autistic and trans using cosplay/fursuiting/art/alt fashion as a way of escaping the reality of our brains not matching our bodies. so one night we were all joking around and trying to thing of a movement to make for ourselves since we couldnt make a club at the community college and we thought up feral/cooties/and rabies as the names. since most of us were furries we decided on rabies pride. and it was born.

some FAQ:

Can anyone use it?

legally yes, no one is gunna call u out or stop you but it was created for autistic trans people so i would LIKE if you were both.

Does ADHD count?

yes its also nuerodivergent.

Did you create the flag?

no we also didnt have one before it was stolen so we just use the rabiosexual one in hopes we can reclaim it back from the ppl who made fun of us.

Where did you get your rabies pride merch?

its all handmade except my jacket patches which i got from this lovely old man on ebay here.

If this is the original definition why havnt i heard of it?

Because memes spread faster than the truth everytime. ppl would rather make fun of us than help us 100% of the time.

What about the strangeons deepdive?

it truthfully wasnt that deep. they just looked up the meme history and didnt even talk to anyone involved. im literally mutuals with spencer and his sister and neither of them got messaged yet they made most the video about him and he saw no money from it. again. 

[ruthiswriting]

body of choice

chainsaw man | denji, power, hayakawa aki, gen, 5k | on ao3

“It’s just…” He stopped. “You really don’t care about tits?”

There was a long silence, punctuated only by low buzz of Aki’s desk lamp. “You care about tits,” Aki said finally, “an unusual amount.”

(or: Time off work means that Denji gets to spend a lot of time thinking about what exactly it is that he likes about tits, anyway. Gender is involved. Power helps.)

inspired by my roommate’s headcanon that denji is a trans lesbian and doesnt know it yet! this fic takes place after the international assassin arc but before ch 73.

trigger warning for denji making transphobic statements due to the fact that he doesnt know that being trans is a thing, internalized transphobia, and body dysphoria. general disclaimer that i am not a trans woman but have been known to experience a gender from time to time. enjoy!

-

They’d all been given time off work, after the Darkness Devil. A leave of absence for Aki to recover, for Power to get her head screwed back on straight, and for Denji to sit and wait for them to be well, since he wasn’t allowed to go on work missions by himself. It was coming to an end soon— Aki had acclimated to his one arm pretty well, and Power didn’t wake up screaming anymore, so they’d be back to work soon.

Still, Denji was running out of ways to fill the empty time. Having nothing to do made him sizzle with nervous energy, waiting for something to do, for a task and directive to achieve. Aki provided the direction of reading materials, movies, and chores— but it still gave him too much time to think.

So it was a lazy afternoon, not long after lunch but still too early for another meal, when Denji asked Power a question.

“Hey, Power,” he said. “You took over a dead body, right?”

She was stretched out on the floor on her back, hugging Meowy in her arms— Aki always said that she held him too tightly, but no matter what Power did the stupid cat purred like a pleased, rusty motorboat. Denji’s question made her stall, frowning as Meowy squirmed. “Eh?”

“That’s what Aki said a fiend was,” Denji said, rolling onto his elbow to look at her from the couch. “A devil that took over a human’s dead body. So you did that, right?”

She paused, thinking this over— reaching for something hidden in her memory. Then her eyes widened, and she sat up. “That’s right,” she said, suddenly triumphant. She rubbed one finger under her nose, pivoting Meowy to rest awkwardly in the crook of her other arm. “I forgot… The way Power was born!”

There was the beginning of the story in the gleam of her eyes— something that would go on, and be uninteresting and mostly nonsensical. “Yeah, I don’t really care about any of that,” Denji said, before she could begin. “I was just wondering, like,” he paused, and one hand rose up, like he could better form the thought if he could grab it. “…Why’d you end up picking the body you did?”

“I used whatever was convenient,” she said. “Of course, my body is the best body I could have gotten. Tis one of the reasons I am so perfect.”

“So you didn’t care about what it looked like?”

Power sniffed, immediately dismissive of the question. “Only humans care about things like that,” she said. Denji could tell she was starting to lose interest in the conversation— she was starting to lift Meowy in front of her, the cat’s little arms jutting awkwardly toward her as his body dangled. “It is very sad! The only good devil feature I have now are my horns… Human bodies really are so unappealing. And they all look the same.”

This caught Denji off guard. He slid forward on the couch, trying to get Power’s attention again to argue. “Huh? That’s not true at all. We all look completely different. Like, you don’t look anything like me. And Aki looks super different from us…” His argument warmed up slowly as he cooked it over, and suddenly, he was invigorated. “We all look super fucking different! That’s crazy.”

“What are you two talking about?” Aki appeared in the doorframe, his one remaining arm wrapped over the white laundry basket he’d been struggling with the whole day.

“Denji is jealous of my perfect body,” Power said.

“No way!”

Before Power could say anything else stupid, Meowy squirmed over her shoulder to land on the ground behind her with a thump. She wheeled again to grab at him, but he scooted comfortably out of her arm’s reach to vanish under the couch, curling his patchy tail around his feet. “Meowy!”

Denji pointed at her, victorious. “That’s what you get. He’s not gonna come out for the rest of the day.”

“You two, stop fighting,” Aki said, before Power’s high pitched whine could end in a yell. “Denji, help me hang up the laundry. And Power, you need to clean Meowy’s litter box. It stinks.”

“Meowy should be allowed to shit wherever he wants,” Power grumbled.

“He does shit wherever he wants,” Aki said. “He just has better manners than you.”

As he stood on the balcony with Aki, picking up shirts one by one to hang, Power’s words continued to turn in Denji’s chest, until they finally stopped to lodge themselves there at an uncomfortable angle. It felt like he’d swallowed a piece of food before chewing it all the way through, and some piece was sticking there. His breaths couldn’t dislodge it.

Was he jealous of Power’s body?

No. There was no way. Why would he want a body like Power’s?

He’d seen a lot of Power’s body. All of it, actually. He knew what it looked like, what it felt like— even what it tasted like, not that he’d wanted to drink her blood. And he’d decided, pretty thoroughly, he wasn’t interested. Whatever exciting mystery lay under a girl’s clothes had fallen flat when it was attached to Power.

But maybe there was something else to want about her body? Something not about sex, or touch. He couldn’t name it. Or maybe, eventually, he could name it— but he definitely shouldn’t.

Laundry ended with hanging their spare public safety uniforms, all in an identical line. Denji was bigger than Power, and Aki was taller than both of them— still, they were all close enough in size that their clothes could easily mingle together in a confused heap. Denji had gotten halfway through getting dressed into Power’s too-small clothes to know he couldn’t wear her pant size, but on the line they almost looked identical. Empty squares of fabric, wafting in the warm breeze. When the sleeves moved, they looked like they were waving in time.

“You’re thinking about something,” Aki said.

He was kneeling by the now empty laundry basket, because even though Denji could have hung the laundry by himself in about the same amount of time, Aki had insistently stayed to pass the laundry to him. Denji guessed he just didn’t like being able to finish the stuff he could before, when he had both arms, and that maybe if he stuck around to the end of the task it was like he could do it anyway. But also, it felt like he was watching Denji. Waiting for something important.

Denji clipped the last shirt up, letting the clothespin clap shut around the starched white collar. “It’s nothin’ important,” he said. “Don’t worry about it.”

The next day, Denji remembered something that brought him back to Power, reading through a manga that Aki had brought home from the conbini.

“I thought of something else about what you said that doesn’t make sense,” Denji said, standing over her.

She had to move the volume down out of her face to look at him, scowling immediately at the interruption. “What?”

“You said that you don’t care about your body, but you do,” Denji said, accusatory. “You wore those— fake boob things. Why the hell would you do that if you didn’t care about what your body looked like?”

She stared at him, and Denji could see from her expression, instantly, she’d forgotten the whole conversation already. Power forgot about a lot of shit, admittedly, but for some reason it felt like a bad sign— like Denji was putting way too much thought into something stupid. He went on pointlessly to add, “you know— what we talked about. How you said human bodies are gross…”

“Correct. Human bodies are gross,” Power said, instantly confident even if she’d forgotten the context. “But there are ways to make them less gross.”

She sat up, throwing the magazine aside. Denji jerked back, out of the circumference of her turning legs, and watched her draw herself up. “It is also helpful to have large breasts,” she said, confident. “Because many people desire them, and so they act in useful ways— like when you helped me save Meowy.” She folded her legs under her and crossed her arms, with sudden finality.“Isn’t that right?”

“Well— yeah,” Denji said. “But you couldn’t have known I would do that before we met…” His eyes flickered to her chest automatically at the memory— she wasn’t wearing them right now, so her t-shirt hung loosely against her body.

“But I knew humans are disgusting. And that they would be interested in me having larger breasts.” She crossed her arms and legs at once, forming a defiant pretzel. “Maybe you should try it some time, Denji.”

Any further argument Denji had against this line of reasoning immediately evaporated. He felt his face flush instantly, and he struggled for words— or anything at all, really. “What—“ he stopped, sputtering. “Don’t be fucking stupid! I can’t have tits, I’m a guy.”

“Why not?”

He stared at her, bewildered. “Cause— cause guys don’t have tits.”

It was so obvious it felt stupid to say— but even with it being obvious it felt like a weak argument. Power wrinkled her nose. “Stupid! Very stupid, Denji. Come with me.” She stood up, briefly on the couch before hopping down next to him. And then, she grabbed his arm and marched him to the bathroom, her fingers making a vise grip against his skin.

“You’re lucky I’m here to help you,” Power said, shutting the bathroom door behind them. This seemed like a bad sign to Denji— Power had to practically be bribed to not leave the door open when shitting, and she didn’t care when they shut the door either. She was trying to cut off his escape route. “Humans are so limited and rigid in their thinking! It’s very boring, so I will help you.”

She was wriggling out of her t-shirt as she talked, discarding it on the floor between them. Then, she ducked her arms behind her back to undo the clasps on her bra. That wasn’t really a big deal— Denji had seen Power naked before, and he’d done her laundry enough times to know what her underwear looked like. But he was starting to feel nervous about wherever this conversation was going. “Power,” he said, eyes flickering to follow her movements, “I don’t know about this.”

“I’m only trying to show you,” she said. “That it is very easy. And that humans do look alike.”

And then, she was pulling his shirt off— Denji choked as the cloth dragged against his mouth, arms jerking up automatically to follow the movement. His shirt joined hers on the floor.

With businesslike hands, Power turned him around so he was staring at the blank drywall. He felt the bra drag around his ribcage. “Whoa— whoa,” Denji yelped.

“Don’t bother fighting me! This is for your own good!” She was snapping the clasps in place, so it was snug against his body. They scratched against his back as they clicked.

Then, she pulled the straps over his arms. Denji felt his eyes drop, to where his cleavage would be, if he had cleavage (but he didn’t because he was a guy, and so he shouldn’t be thinking about this). The rip cord of his chainsaw heart curled awkwardly out between the bra’s lace detailing. He could feel it constrict in his chest— an ugly spasm in reaction to the way it gapped against him.

Power’s hands snaked out from under his armpits. She was holding the breast pads. “Put them on,” she commanded.

Hell no, Denji screamed. Or, well, he thought he screamed. His voice wouldn’t cooperate.  Instead, his hand moved, mechanical, to take them from her.

They were pretty much how he remembered the first time— silicone. Kind of squishy, except for an odd firmness in the middle. There was a sticky backing that probably helped keep them from falling off your chest. They also stank, since they lived up against Power’s sweaty unwashed body most of the time.

He raised them to his chest, and after a few moments of arranging, they were on, cool and sticky against his skin.

Power turned him again with one firm hand on his upper arm. Now, they were both facing the mirror— Denji in Power’s bra. Both shirtless. Both, somehow, with tits. She leaned against him and crossed her arms, smirking with satisfaction. “Now you see,” she declared. “We don’t look so different.”

She was wrong, obviously. Denji was taller than Power, and broader shouldered, and just— different. They looked different. Because they were two different people, obviously, but also because Denji wasn’t a chick. No way anyone would buy that he was just from some fake boobs.

But also, he couldn’t stop looking at them. Why? He knew they weren’t real, and also, they were on him. The usual reasons Denji wanted to be looking at tits couldn’t really apply. Especially when Power, who had actual tits, was standing next to him, naked from the waist up.

Of course, he’d already figured out he wasn’t interested in Power, so it made sense that he wasn’t looking at her— except nothing about this situation made sense at all. Especially that some noise, buzzing in the back of his skull constantly, had gone quiet. A feeling that he hadn’t even known was there was gone.

“You can keep them if you want, Denji,” Power said generously. “I only wear the bra because Aki makes me.”

Reality snapped back into place. Denji pushed her away, yanking off the bra. The boob pads unstuck from his body with only a little coaxing, and they fell to the floor with a mushy plap. “Fucking— keep your clothes on, Power!”  

Denji ran from the bathroom without reclaiming his shirt, hiding in his room from both Power and whatever he had seen in the mirror. He’d have to come back for the shirt later— Aki always got onto them for leaving their clothes in the bathroom when they showered. But he wanted to be sure that Power would be gone. Power, and her stupid fake boobs, and whatever she’d done to him when she snapped that bra into place.

That night, Aki turned on an old cartoon while he cooked dinner— the sizzle of grease popping over the tinny background music and shouted dialogue. TV always mesmerized Power, although she complained if there wasn’t blood and gore. She still sat close to the screen, blocking the bottom half with the top of her head and horns.

Denji didn’t care about TV, really. It had been kind of novel at first, since his dad had sold the TV set when he was pretty young and they’d never had money for things like movies. But since he’d gotten to watch movies with Makima, watching grainy TV on Aki’s tiny television set had hardly been appealing. But he still watched, apathetic, until his stomach began to twist again.

The show was about some kid who got cursed, so that every time they got wet they’d change from a boy to a girl— or a girl to a boy. Denji wasn’t sure. It seemed pretty inconvenient, honestly. You probably couldn’t plan for being splashed with water in every situation, and the kid didn’t want everyone to know about it, so it just ended up being a lot of dumb shit about the kid managing all the different identities and what people thought he was— or she was. Denji could hardly keep up with his one life, so managing two seemed like a huge hassle.

So he didn’t know he felt so much envy, every time the dumb kid slipped into some water fountain or got dunked in a river. It didn’t make sense to want that. Nothing he was feeling made sense.

He took a shower after dinner. The hot water steamed over the mirror, leaving Denji alone with his thoughts, and the water, trickling over his back. His naked chest.

It was probably something wrong with his head. He knew that already, though—everyone had already made it clear that whatever Denji thought about anything was probably weird and fucked up. This was probably the same sort of thing. Whatever this was.

He rubbed his skin raw with soap and tried not to look down.

It was early in the morning when Denji couldn’t take it anymore.

Without understanding why, he crawled out of bed— over where Power was sprawled, taking up half the space in his bed, like she always ended up doing whenever she passed out there— and crept down the hall to Aki’s room.

When Makima had arranged for Denji to live with Aki, the door to Aki’s room had stayed solidly shut. He hadn’t been explicitly told to stay out, but Denji knew when not to sniff. And it wasn’t like he’d been especially compelled by whatever Aki got up to, so, whatever.

But then, Power had moved in too, along with her near-constant impulse to wreck most of Aki’s possessions and her cat that liked to sleep under Aki’s desk. Aki had waged an intense internal battle between wanting to make sure he could hear when Power was up to shit and wanting to keep at least an illusion of privacy. But at some point, he’d admitted defeat, and the door remained just slightly cracked, even when he was sleeping.

Then, after the Darkness Devil, Power would alternate between sleeping in Denji’s bed and Aki’s, so whatever privacy Aki had attempted to maintain had been thoroughly destroyed. He didn’t seem to care too much anymore anyway— even when it was Denji’s turn Aki always ended up ghosting down the hall to check on them, when he thought they were both asleep.

The light was off, and Denji was at least smart enough to feel bad about bugging Aki when he was definitely asleep, and when Denji should be too. He hovered in front of the door, hand half clenched over the knob, before finally reasoning that he’d known when he’d walked over here that Aki would be asleep, so he might as well follow through. He pulled the door open, and crept into the room.

Denji had seen Aki fall asleep on the couch enough times to know that he slept like the dead.  It wasn’t something he understood— it seemed like a pretty big weakness for a devil hunter, if he was being honest. But at this point he at least knew the drill. In the dark, Denji hunted for Aki’s desk lamp, and clicked it on.

The warm yellow bulb cast dozy light over the room. Aki stayed stone still, body half curved on the bed in an uncomfortable contortion. Denji sat next to him, touching his shoulder. “Hey, Aki,” he said, voice a mutter, and felt his ears turn red.

On any other day, Aki would have remained asleep long enough for Denji to back out of this terrible idea. But as Denji hurriedly pulled his hand away, Aki’s nose wrinkled, and he slowly blinked awake. Denji’s shoulders sunk.

“Denji?” Aki’s voice was still thick with sleep, and even in the dim light he squinted like it hurt. “What’s going on? Did Power clog the toilet?”

“It’s not important,” Denji blurted. “Don’t let me bug you, actually.” He stood, planning to leave, but he couldn’t get his feet to unstick from the floor. Every attempt he made just rooted him more solidly in place.

Behind him, Aki’s gaze slowly focused on his back. “…Is everything okay?”

It was a weird sentence, from Aki. He knew it, too— there was something self conscious in the way the words formed, even through his fuzzy concern. But this whole moment was weird, and Denji figured if they both knew it he might as well take advantage of it. He glanced over his shoulder to look at Aki. “I was just, like,” he stalled, trying to find a way to word what was sitting in his chest. “Wanting to know what you thought of something I’ve been thinking about. It’s not important, but, you know…”

The lamp’s bulb was making a weird buzzing noise, filling the dead space between Denji’s fumbling sentences. Aki’s body hadn’t moved, but his eyebrows kept contracting, like if he furrowed them enough he could get to the point of Denji’s sentence. Finally, he said, words slow, “you want my advice.”

Super lame. It sounded so lame when Aki said it, in his weird, grown up way of talking about everything. “Yeah,” Denji said.

Aki looked at Denji. Looked at the alarm clock on his bedside table that was scheduled to go off in three hours (which Denji knew because whenever he couldn’t sleep he could hear Aki start to move at the same time every morning). Looked up, finally, at the ceiling, squinting into nothing. Then, he said, “okay.” And he sat up.

Before he could stop himself, Denji sat again on the bed. This time, Aki drew his legs up, making room for Denji. He waited expectantly for Denji to start talking.

“It’s just..” Denji was glad, suddenly, for the awkward configuration on the bed. Looking at Aki in the eye felt too intense. “You know. I was thinking about…” He took a breath, and said in a  burst, “Aki, you’re gay, right?”

The silence suddenly got a lot thicker. Denji could feel the way Aki stared into the side of his head with a new, unwelcome intensity. When he talked, there was a beginning of an aggravated edge to his voice. “Did you wake me up at three in the morning to ask me why I’m gay?”

“No,” Denji said defensively. “It’s just— I’m trying to understand something, okay.”

“Why..” Aki stopped, and ran a hand over his face. He tried again, voice mechanically even. “Why do you think I’m gay?”

This, at least, was an easy one. “Your ears,” Denji said. And he pointed at Aki’s ear, where normally, black stud earrings would poke out from behind his bangs. “They’re both pierced, so like… One of them’s gotta be the gay one, right.”

Aki’s face was beginning to sour at his usual impressive rate. Unusually, though, he made an effort to contain it— to keep his bad mood from running off the edges of his face into the rest of the house. “We can unpack that later,” he said. “What’s your point?”

Denji wasn’t sure, was the thing. He wasn’t sure what his point was— only that there was this unknown thing lurking in the base of his stomach, something he didn’t know was good or not. He tilted his head back to look at the ceiling, like the answer was living up there. “It’s just…” He stopped. “You really don’t care about tits?”

There was a long silence, punctuated only by low buzz of Aki’s desk lamp. “You care about tits,” Aki said finally, “an unusual amount.”

“Fuck,” Denji said. He rubbed one arm over his eyes. “I know you think it’s stupid, okay. It’s...” He didn’t know. He didn’t know what it was.

Aki’s head tilted, just a little— the lamp shadowing the way he squinted at Denji. But then, he said, voice slow, ponderous: “are you thinking you don’t care about tits? And that…” He raised his eyebrow, leaving the connection for Denji to make.

“I’m not gay,” Denji said, voice definitive.

Aki didn’t argue this point. He nodded, willing to accept it without trouble. “But there’s something else about it that bothers you,” he said.  “Like…” He paused, slowly feeling out his words. “That you think what you want about them— might not be normal?”

They were statements of fact, made carefully— Aki watching his reaction between every minute word. So Denji knew that he saw the way his shoulders shriveled, inching away from whatever Aki was arriving to. “I don’t wanna talk about this anymore,” he mumbled.

“Why not?”

Denji stared down at his hands. His hands, resting on his legs, and the curve of his stomach against his boxers. “When all those assassins were coming after me,” he said finally. “One of them said… That some things you’re just better not knowing about. So, maybe it’s one of those things.”

Aki considered. “I suppose that can be true in some cases,” he allowed. “But I’d rather know the truth, however painful. …And I don’t think it really is one of those things, this time.”

“So what do you think it is?” Denji challenged him, finally turning his head to look Aki in the eye. “You’ve got something in mind, right? You wouldn’t have said something like that otherwise.”

“Not really.”

Denji couldn’t make out Aki’s face clearly in the dark, so it was hard to tell if he was lying. “Yeah, right,” he said. And he looked away again.

It was a while before Aki responded. Before he said anything, he shifted to be sitting next to Denji— legs close together, the ghost of his empty sleeve batting against Denji’s arm. Denji chanced a look at him, out of the corner of his eyes, but Aki wasn’t meeting his eyes either. He was just looking at some point on the wall. Reflecting.

“Some things you might be better off knowing,” Aki said. “Some things maybe you shouldn’t. But I don’t think it’s wrong to want to get to know yourself better… Even if it’s uncomfortable in the meantime.”

“You do have something in mind,” Denji mumbled.

Aki paused again. “Only based off of what you told me,” he said, voice light. “What you asked me.”

Denji’s vision swam. He squeezed his eyes shut, insistent on blocking out whatever he was feeling, and however Aki was looking at him. “It really doesn’t matter,” he said again, because maybe if he kept saying it it would be true.

The bed creaked, and he felt the mattress rise underneath him as Aki stood. Denji dared to open his eyes to watch him move. Aki was turning to face Denji, so he could use his one remaining arm to push him down to the bed— gently, one hand firm on his shoulder. Denji didn’t fight. He let his body sag, until his head was resting against one of Aki’s lumpy pillows. His eyes kept prickling, so laying down was probably a bad idea. Whatever was burning behind his eyes only got worse the gentler Aki was.

But then, mercifully, Aki turned the lamp off, dropping them both into darkness. He went around to the far side of the bed, and laid next to Denji, a tiny sigh bursting out from behind his lips. Denji felt his throat click.

Aki’s arm cuffed around his head, almost cradling him in the crook of his elbow. “We don’t have to talk about it anymore, if you don’t want to,” he said. “It’s fine if it takes you time to figure it out.”

Denji wanted to protest more. To say that really, there was nothing to figure out, and that Denji was just making a big deal out of nothing. Power had said and done some weird Power shit, and that was all. He could get over it. But at this point, that felt even stupider. So Denji swallowed, and nodded. He didn’t trust his voice anymore, so Aki’s only answer would have to be the way the back of Denji’s neck shifted against his wrist.

Aki didn’t say anything else, only laid against him in the dark, a silent, still presence. Denji drew in breaths until his heart calmed, until he could trust himself to speak. “Should check on Power,” he muttered. “She still gets nightmares sometimes… ‘Specially if she wakes up alone.”

“Right,” Aki murmured. “I can go look— you don’t have to get up.”

“Nah,” Denji said, and he started to sit up.

Before he could get further than his elbows, though, a heavy, furry weight thudded into Denji’s chest. Meowy sank heavily against him, like a furry rock pinning him to the bed.

Denji swore, and in response, Power’s cat meowed in his face. “God, your breath stinks,” he muttered.

“What are you both doing in here?” The vague outline of Power’s body lingered in Aki’s doorway, like a horror movie monster.  If a horror movie monster refused to eat vegetables or brush her teeth. “You left me alone, Denji.”

Denji grumbled, still trying to move the cat. “What’s it look like we’re doing? We’re sleeping. And you defeated the Darkness Devil, so it’s fine, right? Nothing bad’s gonna happen. You’re too tough.”

“Not important!” She stepped into the room and the bare sliver of moonlight coming through Aki’s balcony. It made her face white, almost gleaming with sweat. “I knew Meowy wouldn’t leave me for no reason. You two are too weak and pathetic to be left alone! Very good work, Meowy.” She crossed the room to crawl into bed next to them, pressing up against Denji in an insistent effort to fit.

Denji grumbled in protest, but there wasn’t any stopping her— in a matter of seconds she was insistently pretzeled next to him.

“Thanks for watching out for us, Power,” Aki murmured. “Good job.”

He was already falling back asleep. Which was really pretty annoying, because Aki’s bed really wasn’t big enough for the three of them. But if Denji wanted to move, he’d have to drag all of them with him and he just didn’t want to deal with that. So he sighed and wriggled over, making room for Power by jamming himself against Aki’s shoulder.

Meowy slid off his chest like a heavy ooze, landing between him and Power on the crook of his shoulder. Power curled happily around the cat, one arm catching around it to drape across Denji’s chest.

And then, they were asleep again, with just Denji awake. Watching the dawn light start to crawl across the ceiling.

Sometimes, when he was stuck on shit like this, he started to wonder if he had been better off when it was just him and Pochita. Even if he didn’t have money and food, it was less complicated. He didn’t have time to think about things like tits, because he was too busy trying to pay rent, and the bills, and feed him and Pochita. It was harder, but also way, way fucking easier.

Right now, though, it was okay. Denji could stand thinking a little more, if it was like this.

He let his eyes close. This time, he fell asleep.

[dangan-meme-palace]

Debunking ice cold takes I've seen in the wild:

"There's so much discourse about Kaito being homophobic on my timeline... that man is not homophobic!! Not in the slightest!! c'mon now :|"

He said a slur with both transphobic and homophobic connotations when a man (kork) spoke with a feminine voice.

When Shuichi made a move on him in Salmon Mode he reacted with disgust and told him to "save it for the girls."

Maybe you should actually read those posts instead of just saying that he's not with no evidence or reasoning as if it proves anything?

He's fruity as hell. Did you see that jacket? Those cuffed jeans????

I did see them. They're kinda ugly ngl.

I refuse to believe that Kaito's shitty outfit is being used as evidence of him being gay and not homophobic. I'm not seeing this. I refuse.

[...] You're telling me you're hung up on a gay ass character being written as homophobic?

When Shuichi made a move on him in Salmon Mode he reacted with disgust and he used a slur derogatorily so I'm willing to bet my ass that Kaito's 100% straight but I'd be mad if anyone was being homophobic so jot that down

"Written as homophobic" christ you're not seriously trying to pull the "It's not Kaito, it's Kodaka" bullshit are you?

Not to be dismissive of the homophobia but–

Oh I really don't like where this is going.

–cancelling Kaito was a whole genre of Instagram for a while as if the person responsible wasn't. The writer.

Oh wow, so you really are going for the "It's not Kaito, it's Kodaka" bullshit...

First of all, you are dismissing Kaito's homophobia by shifting the blame like that so get well soon 🤧

With that logic you could say that Haiji's not really a pedo, he's just written that way, or that Junko's not really despair, she's just written that way. No character (that I personally like) has done anything bad ever because they were just written that way is the dumbest take in history.

Second of all, dismissing all criticism of a character's homophobia as "cancelling" because you personally like him is dumb. He's homophobic and Kaito has never apologized or showed anything to prove he's stopped being that way so it's an entirely valid criticism to make.

It's doubly absurd since we had DR1-2 with Chihiro and Mondo where everyone and their mother knew Kodaka was a transphobe or wrote trans characters as jokes and the fandom loves both Chihiro and Mondo anyway. It's almost like this fandom loves double standards with Kaito.

Trans activism relies on respecting people's ability to self report their own gender despite any appearance they may have. Chihiro himself tells Makoto that he's a boy and gets upset when Makoto expresses disbelief and still refers to him as a girl. We even see what Chihiro thinks from his own perspective in the UTDP and we see that even in his own mind he doesn't identify as a girl, but a boy. Chihiro identifies as a man.

Chihiro's backstory and his interactions with Mondo actually comments on Japan's traditional views regarding masculinity and how they could be damaging to men in their society so this is not a trans narrative and as such not transphobic, it's actually a really good message that speaks against toxic masculinity and points out it's effects.

But anyway, the main point I'd like to make here is that, really, you can like or hate any character you want for any reason you want, so even if Mondo and the DR1 cast were transphobic, people could still enjoy them as long as they acknowledged they were transphobic. So go on, acknowledge that Kaito's a canon homophobe. I'm waiting.

Like when it's writing of Chihiro's character that leans on transphobic tropes, it's on Kodaka and for Mondo, he has his bromance with Taka so [hardly] anyone calls him a transphobe, but when it's Kaito saying a line (for a dumb, edgy pun no less) it's on Kaito and not Kodaka?

What Kaito said wasn't a "dumb, edgy pun." Kaito derogatorily called Kork a trans/homophobic slur because he saw that Kork was speaking effeminately, much like a femme gay man or a trans man that doesn't do vocal conditioning might sound. Kaito was even yelling at Kork in that moment to "stop acting like a [slur]," so he was beyond a shadow of a doubt using it as an insult, not as a "dumb, edgy pun."

And not only that, but like I've said previously he reacted with disgust when Shuichi made a move on him in Salmon Mode and specifically told Shuichi to "save it for the girls." It's not a ~wacky one-off line~ it's an established part of his character.

So yes, I blame Kaito for using a slur as an insult against someone because they were acting too gay in his eyes.

Next question.

[...] But like, even if it was, people always focus on in game backstories when it's not Kaito to make sense of their actions and him being an orphan who seemed to be a an [only] child living with his grandparents, hence not caught up on [current politics] anyway sure gets ignored.

It's almost like backstories and character depth only matters when it's not Kaito.

Sorry for the long response, I'm just frustrated with the way the fandom is extremely hypocritical with his character in specific.

For someone that whines about Kaito's backstory getting ignored you've all but thrown away Chihiro's, haven't you? If you hadn't then you'd know that Chihiro identifies as a man and canonly only wears a girl's uniform to escape bullying because his body wasn't manly enough in the eyes of other boys because the actual message of Chihiro and Mondo was about toxic masculinity.

But I guess backstory and character depth only matter when it's Kaito 🙄

Y'all act like Kaito never went to school or went on social media or watched the news, he's been around more people than his grandparents I guarantee it. He's not trapped in an echo chamber.

And not only that, but Kaito used the slur in the correct context, meaning he absolutely knew what it meant and he absolutely meant it derogatorily. Kaito didn't just happen to use it on accident, he knew exactly what he was saying. So you really can't claim ignorance here.

[chroniccombustion]

Caught in The Grey (ch 6)

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 -> (unavailable)

Souji is talking to Kanji.

Souji is walking with Kanji.

Yosuke feels something inside of him twist sharply. He feels… sick.

Chapter 6: On the Outside, Waiting

“I was only in my mind, You were on the outside waiting. I could feel you all the time. Your voice could save me...”

- (“Echo”, Starset)

Thursday absolutely creeps into existence.

Yosuke wakes with a vicious headache. It doesn’t start off slowly, either; from his first moment of consciousness, even before opening his eyes, his head feels like something has been trying to claw its way out from inside his skull while he slept. It thrums just behind his eyeballs, leaving everything tinted ever-so-slightly yellow around the edges with each pulse. He digs the heels of his hands into his eye sockets in an attempt to lesson the pressure, but all he gets for his troubles is a stinging, lingering starburst behind his lids – not even ten minutes into the day and Yosuke’s mood is already beyond all hope of saving. So, bleary and exhausted, he forces himself to ooze out of bed like melted wax. He gets up, frowning against the sickening dizziness, the weird sallow hue, and drags himself through the house to get ready for the day.

Going about his morning routine feels like he’s wading through wet concrete. The constant pain keeps his stomach just barely at the point right before nausea, and as he sidesteps around Teddie in their new “brotherly tradition” of communal teeth-brushing, Yosuke has to actively fight the urge to just go back to bed and stay there until Monday. Maybe if he hits a hard reset he can write off the Endless Week from Hell as just another nightmare; fuck knows he’s had enough weird dreams lately that one more wouldn’t mean much at this point.

He doesn’t though. He powers through the motions on pure muscle memory and diverts what little willpower he does manage to scrape together towards putting on a mask of normalcy. It sticks in place precariously, like dried, cracking glue that’s flaking off under too much heat and wear. He keeps the façade going as best he can, however, because despite wishing he could just evaporate into nothingness, Yosuke doesn’t want Teddie to think he’s pissed off at him. (Because he isn’t, not specifically, even if the bear’s enthusiasm for everything is a dozen kinds of irritating this morning.) So Yosuke does his best to try and keep his mental and physical discomfort as close to secret as possible.

More than being worried that Teddie will take it personally, though, Yosuke just doesn’t want his little brother to ask at all. The reserves of energy Yosuke normally has tucked away have not yet been replenished after days of continuous draining. Even the overflow of nervous, anxious energy that comes from his brain and not his body and makes it impossible for him to sit still half the time; he just… doesn’t have it. There’s simply nothing left that he can spare, not even for Teddie.

So Yosuke swallows down the pressure in the back of his throat that threatens to choke him and pretends that nothing is wrong, that his head isn’t pounding like it’s about to explode and he’s two steps away from giving up for the day. He speaks when Teddie prompts him to, answering questions or responding as needed and staying quiet with it’s not. He lets the chatty blond fill the silence for him, instead, and uses Teddie’s unnatural lack of a need for air to his advantage. For the most part, it seems to work in his favor.

Teddie doesn’t notice – or at least, Yosuke doesn’t think he notices – and by the time Yosuke has to leave for school he’s almost convinced that his act has been bought. It’s only at the last minute, when he glances up for no real reason while slipping on his shoes and spots Teddie in the entryway next to him, that he catches the odd sideways look his brother is pinning him with. Yosuke gives him an overly sunny smile as he opens the door, pretending to both his brother and himself that he doesn’t see the frown on Teddie’s face, and finally slumps out into the chilly morning air.

He tries not to think about it for long.

The sky outside is drearier than it has any right to be as he begins trudging along the path to school. He’s actually a little glad for it – the diluted sunlight is just low enough that it doesn’t hurt his eyes and make his still-present headache worse the way a brighter, bluer morning might. Sadly, with his proverbial battery as drained as it is he can’t take much comfort from the lack of extra pain, and it does nothing to lift his mood from the murky depths of his own self-pity. So, even though the sun doesn’t bother him directly, Yosuke keeps his eyes trained on the concrete beneath his shoes as he walks and distributes his weight onto the balls of his feet to keep his own footsteps from jostling his brain.

He makes his way carefully down the familiar first part of the trek. He doesn’t look up, doesn’t pay attention to anything except the quiet music from his headphones – cranked down today so as not to exacerbate what he’s starting to think might be a migraine. Nothing happens; he’s never been so glad for uneventful monotony. He counts the cracks in the sidewalk as he crosses them and lets himself get lost in the repetition.

He doesn’t want to think – not about Souji, not about the dreams, not about the squirmy, guilty feelings low in his gut leftover from last night’s shitty texts. None of it.

He doesn’t want to think at all.

(He feels his knees start to buckle mid-step and has to forcibly blank out his mind to stop himself from remembering everything that’s made him question his own reality over the past few days, lest he turn right the fuck around and lock himself in his bedroom for a year.)

Surprisingly it seems to work; the awful, mocking voice isn’t there this morning, chewing at his memories and bringing them all into sharp relief. There is no harsh whispering in his ears, telling him all the ways he’s fucked up or how worthless and forgettable he is, how much Souji must secretly hate him or how disgusting Yosuke really is down inside. Instead there’s an eerie quiet, only broken by Yosuke’s own mind when he slips and lets his caged thoughts out for a moment. He can’t tell if he’s glad or unnerved.

He tries not to think about that, either.

(The yellow hue hasn’t gone away – he doesn’t know what that means but he’s pretty sure it’s nothing good.)

The mental silence feels like a cool breeze against a scalding sunburn for the short amount of time it lasts. It follows Yosuke the first third or so of the journey, numbing him to the streets and background highway noise within the couple-block radius around his house. But as much as he wishes it could last the entire day, Yosuke has long-since learned that nothing good or decent lingers around him for very long before vanishing and leaving him desperate for steady ground. All too soon, in little visual bits and pieces, he starts to habitually recognize his surroundings once more.

Just past the point where the sounds from the highway he lives by start to fade entirely, Yosuke’s eyes catch on minor landmarks, reminding him of just where he is and where he’s heading. He slows his already-sluggish pace even further and lifts his head to properly align himself with the rest of reality. Up ahead, about a block away, lies the little stretch of road where he and Souji’s paths usually intersect; he’d avoided it yesterday, and looking at it now, even from a distance, Yosuke can feel his nerve endings beginning to spark and crackle, even as his mind stays unnaturally silent. His muscles tense slightly, like his body is getting ready to break into a sprint at any moment before his head can even fully catch up and register the bitter unease that’s steadily taking hold. He hates this. He hates the way his stomach drops out at the sight of he and Souji’s meeting place. There isn’t even anyone there that he can see – though he’s ashamed to admit the teensy flash of disappointment – because... well, because – and, even worse, how afraid he is to stick around and find out if that’s going to change any time soon.

(The whole world turns sickly bile-yellow for a second; the color disappears when Yosuke blinks and swallows with a dry throat, but for a single instant it’s there.)

I can’t do this.

Just like yesterday, just like the coward he is, all talk and no spine, Yosuke lets his feet turn away from his typical route and down a nearby side street. It’ll take him a little extra time to go around like this, to wind through a different part of town and come out at another spot along the river before heading practically a back way up to Yasogami. He’ll still have to take the path to the front gates – there isn’t really another way he can go – but if he can do enough meandering and time it right then he can (probably, hopefully) avoid Souji until he’s actually in the classroom. He’ll have to figure out the rest of the day as it comes.

He stalls and stalls and wanders and picks his way carefully along a zig-zagging line in the general direction of the high school. He’s familiar enough with where he’s going that the roundabout way itself doesn’t bother him; he’s already spent a lot of time mindlessly exploring the streets of Inaba.

When his family first moved from the city, out to this tiny little hole in the middle of nowhere, Yosuke had found himself with too much free time and too few distractions to keep his mind from dwelling on his own misery. Being new meant he had no friends, and being the person everyone seemed to blame for Junes’ existence meant he wasn’t really welcome anywhere either. When he wasn’t at school he was working, and when he wasn’t working he was home alone because his parents were working, and when he was home alone his options were either homework or unpacking boxes. Eventually he ran out of both.

Video games were only fun for a little while before they grew frustrating and boring without someone else to play with. Movies and tv were alright but sooner or later he’d already seen everything twice over. Books where never really his thing because his attention span was always just too short to let him enjoy them; manga was better, but had the same problem as movies. In the end, Yosuke’s only choice for something to do besides sit and stare at the wall had been to go walking – if only to try and familiarize himself with the place he was inevitably going to be stuck in for the rest of his natural life.

So he walked. From the school district down towards his house, looping and doubling back to kill time, or from Junes after an earlier shift and across to the other side of town just to see how far this tiny pocket of rural bullshit extended before he hit the wilderness. He might not have gotten the whole place memorized, but after those first couple of months in Inaba, when his entire experience with the town outside of school, work, or the pile of moving boxes at home had been made up of long walks and lonely hours, Yosuke’s mental map had soon become, at the very least, decent.

He calls on that mental map now as he rounds another corner, pulling at a few staler memories to see if he’s going the way he thinks he is. The house at the end of the street with the blue shutters, the rickety doghouse in the front yard across the road – yep, all still there. He’s probably going to be late again, or very, very close to it, but as long as he keeps moving, as long as he twists and winds and pretends he doesn’t eventually have to join the rest of the student population on the same road to the school entrance, he can keep himself from succumbing to his anxiety. Souji is punctual, Souji likes routine. If Yosuke takes his time getting to school and avoids the usual path, then he theoretically doesn’t have to worry about accidentally running into Souji on the way.

But even as the thought helps to keep the jitters at bay, there is just something so… inherently wrong about it that Yosuke has to bite down hard on the inside of his own cheek to keep himself from choking. This is a violation of his own routine, of everything that has made his world anything considering normal up to this point. Never in a million years would he have ever thought himself capable of outright hiding from his best friend, going out of his way to purposefully avoid him – it feels like a betrayal, like he’s adding just one more slight against Souji to his ever-growing pile of mistakes. A faint echo of loneliness washes over him and clings to his skin like a humid breeze – the morning feels far too much like the walks he used to take before he even knew that Souji existed, all those months ago.

He never wants to go back to that.

He thinks he may have forgotten how to breathe.

Digging his shoes a little more roughly into the sidewalk, Yosuke powers his way up the street – headache be damned – and past the house with the blue shutters, counting his footsteps in his head loud enough to eclipse the lyrics of the song in his headphones. He keeps his head down and his shoulders hunched, only letting his eyes lift from the sidewalk to keep himself from tripping over as he walks like the entire world is clawing at his heels.

He almost doesn’t notice when he’s reached the path that leads through the school district.

He almost doesn’t notice the achingly familiar sound of Souji’s voice further up along the road.

He almost doesn’t notice the figure striding along at his partner’s side.

But then he does.  

Yosuke looks up instinctively as his friend’s voice reaches his ears, startling violently for a moment when he sees just how close he got to Souji without even realizing it. His heart stutters, trembles like the wings of a frightened moth at the flash of silver not even twenty feet in front of where Yosuke has been disassociating as he walks. (And how funny is it that even when Yosuke forgets where he is, his feet always seem to lead him right back to the one thing that’s ever made his life make any sort of sense?) He nearly trips on the next footfall as he overrides his own autopilot and manually slows his pace, falling a little further back from the ethereal swath of black-and-moonlight ahead of him just enough to not be noticed. He makes sure to stay close enough that he can still hear his partner speaking, though – not even the words themselves, just the sound of Souji is all he really needs.

(Just how needy can he get?)

Souji’s voice carries on the slight breeze that blows through and ruffles his hair, moving it enough to catch the muted morning light and make it shine like sunbeams across the Samegawa. Souji's volume is as quiet as ever but unmistakable in its steady timbre, its velvet-softness, and even with his headphones still on Yosuke can hear it. He’s trained himself to pick up on Souji’s commands through his music while in battle. By now it’s almost second nature to him to react every time his friend speaks.

But Souji isn’t speaking to Yosuke. No, Yosuke is still a ways behind him and from the looks of it Souji hasn’t noticed Yosuke at all. Instead, walking side-by-side, so close that their arms nearly brush every time one of them gestures, Souji is talking to someone else. Someone tall, with broader shoulders and a louder voice, bleach-blond hair slicked back to show off the glint of several earrings, a uniform jacket worn like a cape instead of over the arms.

Souji is talking to Kanji.

Souji is walking with Kanji.

Something inside of Yosuke twists sharply. He feels… sick.

It sits like concrete in the pit of his stomach, growing rapidly in its weight until he can barely breathe, can barely see, the edges of his vision almost pulsing with that same ominous yellow. He can't think for a moment, can't focus on anything but the way his best friend – his best friend, goddamnit! - walks just a little too close to Kanji, smiles just a little too widely at Kanji. It's wrong, it's wrong, it's so wrong, and Yosuke can't even begin to peel back his own thoughts from the slow crescendo of screaming now building inside his mind to parse just why he's suddenly so angry. The yellow becomes tinged with something almost like an acidic green, the color of jealousy and vomit and everything Yosuke can feel at the back of his throat like a wad of wet paper. He feels shaky in a new way, no longer afraid but something closer to how he tenses before a strike in battle. Defensive. A snarl curls at his lips before he can stop himself, and it's only because he's still rooted to the spot in a kind of shock that doesn't even feel human anymore that he doesn't go launching himself across the way and yanking Souji back to himself by the arm.

Somewhere, deeper than the anger and the horrible heat trickling down his spine, Yosuke knows he's being unreasonable; after all, Kanji is Souji's friend, too, and it's not like Yosuke has exactly been available for Souji to interact with recently, so there's nothing in the world wrong with the other boy walking to school with another member of their team. He wishes he could pinpoint where this is even coming from, why he's suddenly flipped like a switch from wanting to avoid Souji at all costs to violently wanting to hoard him all to himself. It doesn't make any sense, and Yosuke's actually starting to get a little bit frightened of his own reaction.

It's just too bad he can't feel it properly below everything sinking into his heart, poisoning him from the inside out; maybe it would be enough to snap him out of whatever this is.

He stands stock still, only vaguely aware of the other people around him, some shooting looks at him no doubt, and watches as his Souji (his, something in him hisses,) passes through the gate with someone other than Yosuke. He watches, body frozen and eyes burning, refusing to blink as Souji, his friend, his leader, his partner approaches the school together with Kanji, the same way he used to (used to, should be,) with Yosuke.

It shouldn’t knock the wind from Yosuke’s lungs like he’s taken a Zio straight to the chest; it shouldn’t, because when all is said and done it's almost guaranteed all this is completely innocent – Souji is a friendly guy, and it's never been like him to say no to anyone asking for his time. (Except for when he did, Yosuke thinks bitterly, because wow, that wound is just not closing.)

But that's the thing, isn't it? Because no matter how much it is absolutely Yosuke's fault for putting this newest distance between him and his partner, even if Souji's refusal to talk to him had set everything in motion, no matter who or what is truly to blame for this, it does little to change the very real fact that Yosuke is not the one by Souji's side right now.

That Souji has picked someone else.

The scene is so similar that it’s almost as if Yosuke is looking at a displaced echo, a badly done juxtaposition of two different images made to look like one. Like someone stripped the negative of a photograph and pasted in a poor substitute. Like someone replaced the original and, and...

Told you, the voice inside his brain sneers. For the first time that morning, Yosuke feels that formless smirk stretching wider, curling into his fingers and toes like something settling into its frame after being wadded up, stuffed into a space it didn't fit. It feels simultaneously right and wrong – wrong because he doesn't think it's supposed to be there, hiding just behind his limbs, adhering to his bones and pricking at his nerve endings; right because the thing now wearing his skin alongside him disagrees.

It was only a matter of time before he got tired of your shit.

It was only a matter of time before he got tired of you.

He takes a few steps after them as they start to get just a little bit too far away, hyper -focusing on the way Souji acts, the sound of his voice and the way it lilts and flows, comfortable in a way Yosuke's rattling memories can't recall if he's ever been before. Yosuke zeros in on the lack of distance between the pair ahead of him, scanning them like Rise does in the TV and storing away all the minute details he can suddenly see, focus now sharp as his kunai. He sees the way Kaji's face reddens. He sees Souji looking over at Kanji with a bright expression, with a smile that shows teeth and pulls the corners of his mouth wider than Yosuke has ever seen when Souji is talking to him. He feels a growl rumbling deep in his throat.

Souji tilts his head in Kanji’s direction as the punk says something, swinging a large hand out in front of himself with obvious excitement and nearly smacking into Souji’s side with his elbow. He catches himself before the hit lands and sheepishly pulls his arm away, face going redder. Souji lightly, deliberately, bumps Kanji's elbow with the back of his own hand, no doubt reassuring the blond that his exuberance has caused no harm. Kanji rubs at the spot awkwardly. He says something. He blushes harder.

And Souji laughs.

It not a real laugh, it never really is with Souji, nothing louder than a very quiet chuckle or a huff or a breath, but Yosuke has heard it before, has been the one to bring it out before, so he would know that sound anywhere, will always recognize that silent shudder of his partner's shoulders as the other boy uses his body to communicate instead of his voice. Yosuke doesn't have to hear it – his mind supplies the sound.

That's mine! he snarls.

Not anymore, something mockingly singsongs in reply.

The yellow-green in his eyes grows darker and Yosuke can see the corners start to creep inward with solid color, until all he can see is the fondness on Souji's face that isn't meant for him.

He has to claw his way back to the forefront of his mind in order to get to class on time, just barely slinking into the room with the teacher coming up the hallway behind him. His eyes bore into the soft grey hair at the back of Souji's neck and – for the briefest of moments – he has to quell the urge to lean forward and sink his teeth into his partner's flesh, leave his imprint for all the world to see and claim what's his.

He doesn't even notice the way the thing inside him that before would have been copper and sick now seems to purr at the thought.

---

He doesn't remember the rest of the day.

Yosuke is aware that he somehow makes it through the school day, bounding out of the room at lunchtime to go and... well, he doesn't even know, really. He thinks he may have gone up to the roof but he isn't sure. He knows that he did eventually go back to the classroom – presumably after lunch – but beyond that there's nothing. The end-of-day bell sounds and he's immediately on his feet, out the door, down the hall, head foggy and vision tinted yellow; if anyone says anything to him then he doesn't even notice.

Something ugly is happening to him inside. He knows it, doesn't know how to fight it. Right now, after that morning, after everything swirling around in his chest and his head for most of the week now, Yosuke feels a disconnect between himself and reality. He's spent so much time trying not to think, then over-thinking, the repeating, and repeating, and repeating, that it's like something has finally snapped. He's so tired and wrung out that he can't tell how he even feels right now, whether he's mad at Souji or Kanji or himself. Or all three. Or just fucking everything. It's as if there's a block of ice holding him separate from the dark things twisting like vines behind his heart; he can't look at them, can't pull them apart with his hands and study them, he can only feel them coiling tighter and tighter until his body goes numb.

His phone goes off in his pocket as he stalks his way down the hill away from school, thighs burning despite months of combat toning his muscles inside the TV. He checks it on instinct, feels the vines in his ribs twist in another direction as he reads the “I miss you, Partner,” that Souji had texted him.

Guilt or anger or self-disgust or something climbs its way to the back of his throat and threatens to spill from his lips onto the sidewalk and it's such a mess, such a god-fucking-awful mess that the only thing Yosuke can do is type a quick, dismissive, “sorry @ work” and back out of the text before he chokes on molten, raw emotion. Without even looking he scrolls and clicks on a random chat log further down the list and pulls it up so he doesn't have to look at Souji's name anymore, doesn't have to try and figure out if he's upset or happy or just sick to his stomach. Chie's nickname screams at him from the phone screen, her words from last night still justifiably pissed.

Yosuke takes a second to think of the dirtiest pick-up line he can and sends it off, not even caring anymore. It doesn't feel like anything, he gets no satisfaction from it, doesn't even bother harboring the idea that maybe she'd find it funny like he used to do ages ago. It doesn't mean anything. Nothing means anything anymore. He's just hollow.

His phone 'ping!'s and he barely glances at the response. She's mad again. Whatever. Let her be. Yosuke deserves it – the frigid rush he gets from her anger coats his skin and, in a horrible, disgusting way, it makes him feel better. Good. At least someone feels something in his direction. He sends her another message, pretending it was all a joke, that he wasn't punching at the walls of his tiny world just to feel anything anymore. He's gone so far from the constant buzz of anxiety and fear that he's grown immune to it now. Everything is so loud and at the same time it's all too brutally quiet. It's like he's rigged for self-destruction, caught in a loop of feeling betrayed and wanting to betray in return out of spite, folding back around to hating himself for it, wishing everything was back to normal, that he and Souji were back to normal, and then wanting to rip his own skin off when he realizes they aren't and can't. It tilts him side to side and he can't balance. He can't regulate his emotions, can't sort out his feelings, has no outlet – all he can do is take a swipe at everything around him and hope he finds a handhold, something to pull him back to the surface. Maybe if he causes enough damage outside himself then it will make up for all the damage already caused inside.

He wants to scream.

Instead, Yosuke types out another dirty text and hits send with shaking, vindictive hands.

Nothing changes as the afternoon stretches on. Chie spits more fire at him through the phone, apparently borrowing Yukiko's element for a while as she tells Yosuke in loving detail just how many ways she intends to break his knees. He hates that it's almost comforting in its normalcy – albeit in a dark and over-exaggerated way. The ice block sits comfortably in his chest, hindering him from properly feeling the fallout of his actions as the vines dig their thorns in deeper; he knows that if he tries to look behind it then he'll be disgusted with himself all over again, (Chie really doesn't deserve this kind of treatment, for one thing) and so he just. Doesn't. He holds back the part of him still consciously rallying against everything he's doing, yelling at him to stop, throwing itself against the frozen wall to try and make him feel all the remorse and guilt he knows is there behind the ice. It's building, drop by drop, bucket by bucket, action by action, but Yosuke can't make himself stop.

You really are a worthless piece of shit, aren't you?

It's to the point where Yosuke can no longer tell the mocking, hissing, whispering voice inside his head from his own. He thinks there might not be a difference at all anymore.

He wanders through the streets and between the buildings in the same weaving, winding pattern he did that morning, letting the music in his ears and the faint ache in his legs from his ceaseless power walking distract him from all the things he wants to pretend aren't happening. Eventually he reaches the bottom of another hill and doubles back to kill more time before his shift at Junes – because, unlike the night before, he really does have one this time. He debates on calling in as he takes the long way around to the shopping district. Right now he barely feels human, let alone like he's capable of interacting with other people; donning the mask of artificial pep needed to deal with shoppers is draining even on the good days, despite the fact that he's used to being on autopilot while at work with too many years of involuntary customer service making it almost muscle memory by now. In the end, though, he decides against it. Calling in will mean having to make up a good excuse for his dad, which might lead to a far longer and more complicate conversation than Yosuke has any desire to have. There's no way he has the energy to play verbal minesweeper with his parents, whether it be now or later once they get home.

He checks his phone to see how much time he has left to fortify himself, to keep his brain and his heart blissfully, chaotically numb, and sees a trio of new texts from Chie that must have come through while he wasn't looking. He taps her name to bring the chat back up and expects to see more of the usual fair. He doesn't.

Meat-Fu: What's going on Hanamura? This isn't normal.

Meat-Fu: U know u can talk 2 me right?

Meat-Fu: Ur my friend & I'm worried.

Yosuke feels like he's been stabbed.

Nonononono,this isn't right! With all the shit he's pulled to get attention, validation, to force the world to prove he's a bastard, none of it was supposed to result in this. He's sick, he's worthless, why can't everyone just hate him as much as he hates himself?!

Yosuke nearly throws the phone away from him, his body suddenly shaking as the ice cracks and the vines squeeze and he comes dangerously close to feeling something. This wasn't – he doesn't' know how to deal with this. Everything is off-kilter; Souji has gone and replaced him with Kanji and Kanji is stealing his best friend and it's all Yosuke's fault because he's disgusting, of course Souji isn't going to want anything to do with you anymore – and Kanji probably has the same kind of dreams that Yosuke's been having because that's what gay people do, right? And now Chie, of all people is picking up on the stuff Yosuke is trying so hard to shove down because how does he even begin to deal with all of this and he can't let her know, he can't! Not after everything he's done and said and everything he's turning into, oh god.

Blinking through the sudden blur in his vision, (when did he start tearing up, what the hell?) Yosuke grips his phone in both hands and sucks in breath after breath of too-thick air. He's so tired of borderline breakdowns. Typing as best he can with his limited sight, he fumbles out a reply, just something, anything to grind the conversation to a screeching halt before it can even begin.

Yosuke: wth r u talking about? lol ur crazy Chie

He sends it. It's not enough, it's too casual, too easy to brush off, but he can't see the screen anymore and his fingers won't move right. So he sends it and he stands there in the middle of the sidewalk near the bus stop in the shopping district, staring unseeing down at his phone and forcing himself not to blink. The tears stay in his eyes, dry up, fade away. He takes a shaky breath in and lowers his phone.

“Yosuke-kun?”

Oh no.

It's like a nightmare. An actual nightmare. He looks up and sees Yukiko standing a few feet away from him, likely waiting for the stupid bus (why did he have to stop here? Why?) with what looks like a couple of Junes bags draped over the crook of her elbow. She must have just finished shopping and come straight to the bus stop, ready to head home.

Which means Yosuke would have been damned either way – if he'd gone straight to work he would have run into her there, and because he'd stalled for so long he'd run into her here. He shouldn't have answered Chie's text, should have kept moving, should have taken another route or hidden in the stock room at work. He should have--

Yukiko takes a step closer, concern sweeping over her delicate brows. “Are you alright, Yosuke-kun?” She takes another step. Her lips pull into a frown as she looks at him and Yosuke can't even begin to imagine what's she's seeing.

“H-huh?” he squeaks out. His knees don't want to hold him up.

Yukiko's frown deepens. “You look troubled, did something happen?”

Yosuke shakes his head. “No! No, I'm perfectly fine, I'm just uh...” He flounders for a second, staring at her like she's an approaching Shadow four times his size – even if she hasn't moved since that second step in his direction. He knows his eyes are wider than a cat's, he can feel it. Finally he manages to blurt out, “stalling? Cuz I really don't wanna go to work.” (Well it's not... exactly a lie.)

From the way Yukiko is looking at him, he knows she isn't convinced, can already tell she's thinking of saying something. She's quiet and polite most of the time, yes, but she's been getting better at speaking her mind, and that scares him right now. He can barely keep himself together over a text conversation; there's no way in hell Yosuke will be able to make it out of a face-to-face one alive.

So he defaults. He defaults and it leaves him feeling gross and slimy even before it's finished leaving his tongue; “You know, if you're worried about me, you could always come cheer me up.”

(Oh god does he wish he could put the words back in his mouth and swallow them down.)

Yukiko leans back slightly, her expression turning uncomfortable, and it just serves to make Yosuke feel even worse about what he's doing. She opens her mouth to speak. Yosuke cuts her off.

“You never did send me that picture.” He tries to wink. He doesn't like how it feels.

This time, Yukiko recoils as if something foul has been splashed at her. “That's--”

But Yosuke is already turning on his jelly-kneed legs and willing them to carry him just around the corner, just out of sight. “See you tomorrow!” he calls, trying to keep himself from retching as the words come out. Behind him, he hears the sound of the bus' breaks squealing and pushes his legs faster. Yukiko won't follow him, he knows (he hopes,) lest she miss her ride home and have to wait for the next one. Yosuke has been spared for now.

(Except he hasn't really, now has he?)

He's almost makes it up to the top of the shopping district, almost makes it to (possible) safety at Junes where he can hide between the aisles, go and find things to do and redo in the stock room, keep himself busy without actually doing anything. It'll be a welcome distraction at this point, despite how vehemently he doesn't actually feel like dealing with customers, coworkers, hell, he'd even probably dodge Teddie because Yosuke just genuinely can't today. (And on the chance he spots one of his friends walking into whatever area he happens to be in, well... then he'll just have to find something to hide behind and stay there until they go away.)

He's almost to his goal when the universe decides he's not done suffering quite yet. There, coming around the corner, Nanako perched happily on his shoulders, is Souji.

Yosuke stops dead in his track, so abruptly that it's only by some tiny speck of luck that he doesn't fall face-first onto the pavement and break his nose. Panic erupts in his blood like he's been doused in gasoline and set on fire and suddenly his lungs are collapsing in his chest. He doesn't know how he manages to do it, but he dives to the side into an alleyway and tears out the other end as if his life depends on it.

Souji can't see him, Souji can't know he's there, because Yukiko and Chie both talk to Souji and Yosuke hasn't even managed to deal with all the stuff that's already happened this week, hasn't dealt with this morning even! So if Yukiko and Chie talk to Souji and tell Souji about all the horrible shit that's Yosuke's been doing...

Yosuke is doomed. Yosuke will absolutely be doomed. He hasn't spoken to Souji in days and he can't let their next interaction be Souji looking at him with disappointment, with anger, with disgust.

Yosuke runs through back streets and down alleyways until his legs betray him and he collapses against a wall just outside the Shiroku Store. He wasn't even aware he'd managed to book it that far – no wonder his chest feels like it's about to explode. He waits until he can manage to catch his breath, leaning into the bricks so he doesn't sink to the ground. When he thinks he can move again, (ten minutes, twenty minutes, half an hour later, he has no idea how long he's there,) he pulls himself around the corner and looks first to the left, up towards Junes, and then to the right down the shopping district. No Souji. Good. Hopefully the other boy is still up shopping with his sister and will be for a good long while, (especially if Teddie has anything to say about it.) Tentatively confident that he's not about to be ambushed by his former partner, Yosuke slips shakily out onto the sidewalk.

First thing's first, he shoves his hand into his pocket and digs around until he finds every bit of loose change he's got and shoves it gracelessly into the receiver of the vending machine. He hits a random button, doesn't even care what he gets so long as it's liquid and cold. He chugs the can without even tasting anything and he stifles a wince as the drink hits his burning throat, before the raspy dry feeling finally goes away. He tosses the can away in the nearby trashcan and slinks back into the alley to hide while he calls his dad and tells him he can't make it in for his shift.

(Chie texts him again because of course she does. He doesn't even look at it this time; he just fires off a quick, “@ work can't talk” and puts his phone on airplane mode.)

---

Yosuke makes a quick stop inside Shiroku Store before chancing the trip back home. He grabs a couple of instant ramens for himself, knowing full well no one will be home for a while to make dinner and that his own appetite is questionable after his stomach has been tied up in knots for so long. It'll also give him an excuse not to have to sneak back downstairs later and risk running into his parents. Again, not a conversational minefield he's willing to navigate right now. (He also grabs a pack of mochi to placate his little brother when Teddie inevitably whines about Yosuke not coming in to work.) Once he's out he heads straight home – straight, because the sun has started going down and it's freezing outside, so he feels confident enough in the low temperature to take the gamble on none of his friends being out where he can stumble into them.

He makes it to his house without incident, makes it inside and up to his room, even manages to take a bath without a fuss since Teddie isn't home yet to knock insistently on the bathroom door. For now, he's safe. But even knowing he's at home, alone, with his phone far away from him in the other room, Yosuke finds that he still can't relax. He soaks in the warm water, (he'd washed as quickly as fucking possible because even days later the shower makes his stomach squirm,) and tries to will the anxiety to bleed out through his pores. It doesn't.

Something is keeping his shoulders tense, his nerves frayed and spiked. Even when he gets out of the bathtub after Teddie comes bounding into the house, loud even from downstairs, Yosuke feels like he could jog all the way back to school and have energy left over.

He gives Teddie the mochi, which effectively shuts up any line of questioning that might have been incoming, and Teddie babbles excitedly as he eats. He tells Yosuke all about how “Sensei and Nana-chan” had come by to do some grocery shopping, how he and Nanako had run off to find the groceries together while Souji had wandered off. How they'd found him later after they were all done, around the side of the building, crouched low to pet the stray cats. Yosuke listens to all of this with far more attentiveness than normal; he only breathes once Ted is finished and there has been no mention made of Yosuke whatsoever.

It's... weirdly easier to relax his body after that, though understandably not his mind. His little brother is a small sliver of something normal, oblivious and innocent and forever just happy to be there. It lets Yosuke pretend that nothing bad is waiting for him just outside the house's front door.

Normally he'd play a few rounds of a video game with his brother until one of them felt tired enough to go to bed; tonight, though, Yosuke can't keep his attention on the game, and so gives up after only two failed races. He moves to sit on the bed and picks half-heartedly at his cold instant ramen, only partially watching as Ted plays against the game's AI until the bear starts getting bored. Teddie decides that they're going to have a movie night together after that, and Yosuke lets the blond boy put in some brightly-colored Ghibli thing for them to watch. Yosuke inevitably zones out.

It isn't until the credits end and the dvd menu comes back with a loop of the movie's main theme that he finally looks up, blinking at the red numbers on his alarm clock that read far later into the night than he'd thought, and then down to find his brother passed out cold on the floor. Yosuke sighs and gets up, throwing his unfinished noodles away before awkwardly – albeit carefully – dragging Teddie's slumbering form over to the closet and plopping him onto his futon.

It's as Yosuke is getting ready to turn off the light that he sees Teddie's phone lying on the carpet.

He doesn't know why he thinks it, what makes him link the sight of his little brother's cell phone to the flicker of memory that bubbles up to the surface. He doesn't know where the idea comes from. But he has it.

Rise had taken pictures of everyone and everything at the pageant. Rise had taken pictures of Souji.

Teddie had been begging Rise to send the pictures to his phone.

Yosuke has no idea whether or not Rise had ever actually did, but with how proud of herself she'd been for taking them, he'd bet money on there now being a whole folder of pageant photos residing in the bear boy's phone.

I shouldn't, he thinks, and not just because it'd be incredibly invasive to go poking around in his brother's phone –  if he does, and he finds what he's looking for, then what? He knows neither the girls nor Naoto took any photos of the second pageant, but despite what he let Yukiko believe (and what he's been trying to convince himself of for days,) Yosuke doesn't need those; he'd snapped a few of his own when the event was happening. There aren't many - he'd been a bit preoccupied worrying over Souji's disappearance at the time, and he'd purposefully avoided taking any pictures of Naoto because they'd looked so miserable that it felt almost cruel, but he has some. (And thinking about it now, he realizes he hasn't so much as opened the photo gallery on his phone even once to look at any of them since he took them.)

So no, it's not photos of the beauty pageant he's looking for.

Slowly, as if terrified Teddie will somehow wake up and throw open the closet door to catch Yosuke in the act, he reaches down and picks his brother's phone up off the ground. He's just picking it up, he tells himself; he's just getting it off the floor so no one steps on it. He's doing Ted a favor. He's not going to look, he's not.

(Liar.)

It's not hard to get into Ted's phone – the bear doesn't have any sort of lock on the screen – and because it's a cheap Junes model, Yosuke already knows exactly how to work it. It takes him less than half a minute to find Rise's nickname in the text logs and pull up their last conversation.

There, staring up at him, is the bottom part of a photo, with what looks like the stage in the school auditorium.

Yosuke immediately feels his palms start to sweat. He crosses the room in two quick, silent strides over to the light switch, turning it off with fumbling fingers and plunging the room into darkness save for the faint glow of his alarm clock and the glare from the phone in his hand. He pads back over to the outline of his bed and throws the covers back, then climbs in, throws the blankets over his head like a child avoiding bedtime, and curls up into a ball on his side with his prize held tight in his nervous hands.

His stomach swoops as he holds his thumb over the up button, ready to scroll past Ted's enthusiastic words of thanks to Rise and see--- but hesitates.

He could stop right now, he thinks; it would be so easy just to shut the phone off, put it on the charger, go to sleep. He could roll over with his face in the pillow and pretend none of this happened. It would be so easy.

Okay, he thinks, momentarily closing the phone. Okay. Okay...

This isn't creepy, it's not; he's just... making sure. Right. Yes. That's all. The dreams started after Yosuke had seen Souji dressed up as a girl – after Yosuke had thought things about Souji dressed as a girl. That had to be the reason, right? He couldn't be gay if he was only attracted to his best friend when Souji was in a skirt, when he looked a little too convincing as a chick. That's where the wires had gotten crossed in Yosuke's head, when his teenage hormones had been confused at the sight of his already-pretty partner making an even-prettier lady. That's all it was, it had to be, and Yosuke was holding the proof, the means to his mental salvation, in his hands. All he had to do was look.

Yosuke closes his eyes and takes a second to brace himself, scared for reasons he doesn't particularly want to explore. He pulls in a deep, unsteady breath. Another. A third. On the final exhale, he opens his eyes and taps a key to wake the screen back up. He stares at the bottom of the photo for just a few moments more and then finally sucks in one more breath, pressing the 'up' as his lungs fill to the brim.

The first few pictures aren't what he needs: a crowded group shot, Teddie flouncing around the stage, Kanji looking ready to break an ankle in his ill-fitting heels, Yosuke hating everything while holding the mic. He keeps scrolling up, growing irritated and more anxious with every photo revealed not to be the one he wants. Eventually he just holds the button down and lets everything scroll by until all the images start to blur together; it's because of this that he very nearly misses a flash of grey and silver as the photo streaks by.

Yosuke immediately takes his thumb off the 'up' and jabs at the 'down' until the picture comes back into view. There, bathed in the harsh spotlight of center stage, stands Souji, expression tightly neutral and face pale. It sucks the breath from Yosuke's lungs.

This. This is what Yosuke has been trying so desperately to find, simultaneously to avoid. It feels wrong, somehow, like an invasion of more than just Teddie's privacy, but the whole school had seen Souji in a skirt so it's not like it's a secret that anyone's trying to keep. Still, as Yosuke stares at the familiar shape of his partner's face, his hips, his hands, Yosuke feels, not the wave of relief he'd been expecting, but sour. He can't even put his finger on it, why his face seems to curl up in frustration without him even consciously bidding it to; Souji's body is just as lean and graceful as he remembers it looking, with the long silver wig framing his face and softening his features and the line of the skirt hugging his waist to give him just the faintest of hourglass figures. It should be beautiful, in a way it is, but the more that Yosuke stares at the photo the less and less attracted he finds himself being.

This isn't right.

(Oh, but isn't it?)

Yosuke scrolls up to look for another photo, finding a better one, a closer one, on the very next try. This time the camera is zoomed in, giving Yosuke a much clearer view of Souji from the waist up. Whatever bra the girls had stuffed him into makes his chest look natural, a petite curve to his body that fits stunningly along with the slender way his figure normally seems to taper slightly at his waist. Objectively, Souji looks great, hot, even in the pageant clothes he'd been forced to wear; Yosuke had thought as much when seeing his partner in person on that nightmare of a day. He squints at the phone in his hands and tries to recall just what specifically he'd found attractive when he'd been staring at Souji backstage in the dim, shitty lighting. His hips, definitely – he remembers thinking how perfect they would be for him to rest his hands on. Souji's waist, his chest, yes, but also his hands. Yosuke remembers how ethereal Souji had looked, too, with his eyes and the wig (an uncannily perfect match for Souji's actual hair color,) shining dull silver in the dark. The curve of his jaw, the hint of skin just above his collar bones, the line of his thighs barely there below the straightness of the skirt.

Looking at the photo now, Yosuke can see all the the things that he found so alluring before – and feels, strangely, next to nothing.

He can't understand it, why is he not swooning over the image of his best friend making the most amazingly convincing girl Yosuke has ever had filthy dreams about? (Something turns over in his mind, and suddenly, sickeningly, Yosuke feels like he's on the highest peak of a roller coaster, staring down at the hundred-foot drop below him just as the cart begins to move.)

The sex dreams hadn't featured a skirt.

They hadn't featured long hair or perky boobs.

In his dreams, Souji had just been... Souji. A flat, smooth chest, all toned muscle and softly masculine edges. The silver had been shorter, the cheekbones sharper, all of it had been Souji as he always is – a guy. No matter how gorgeous Yosuke thinks (or thought) Souji looked in his pageant outfit, the blinding fact remains that the boy in his dreams had stayed a boy.

Slowly, stomach twisting into nausea, Yosuke reaches out from the safety of his blanket shield and picks his own phone up off the night stand beside the bed. Like some kind of gremlin, he snatches his hand – phone and all – back into the darkness beneath the covers, clutching it to him with fingers so clammy it threatens to hinder his grip. His heart flutters in his chest, hard enough that he can feel his own pulse; he swallows and his throat is dry. Trembling, Yosuke holds a phone in each hand, holds them up next to one another. He opens his, and fumbles his way to his photo gallery, clicking through until he comes to a picture of himself and Souji, standing close and smiling as Yosuke snaps the selfie.

Oh god.

It's all still there. The photo is, again, a waist-up shot, but even still Yosuke can see the gentle line of Souji's jaw, the hint of his collarbones just past the open top button of his shirt, the long, delicate fingers on strong and calloused hands. Souji's hair is shorter, of course, and doesn't frame his face the way the wig did, so his cheekbones are more visible, his chin slightly sharper, but his eyes. Souji's eyes are still that same summer-storm hue, round and kind, and full of far more life than any of the photos of him in pageant garb. Pageant Souji looks like a marionette; real Souji looks like rainclouds incarnate.

Yosuke's gaze travels down to the very bottom of the picture, where the image cuts off right below Souji's belt buckle, leaving the dip of his waist, the jut of the top of his hip, all still visible. He's wearing his uniform shirt and jacket, but even with the layers of straight-cut clothing Yosuke can see that same faint, curving line of his partner's body that almost looks like the start of an hourglass. Yosuke can't see the other boy's thighs in this one, but the line of Souji's hip fills outward slightly, instead of carving a path straight down like Yosuke is so used to seeing on most other guys – himself included.  Souji, for all that he's built like an athlete, is only sharp in certain places, soft in others; a graceful blade of curving steel, handle wrapped in velvety leather.

Yosuke tears his eyes away from the photo of him and Souji together and back over to the one of Souji at the pageant. The features are the same but different, radiant in one and hollow in the other – both have the same shape, the same color, the same lines and vivid angles. But even without the false femininity, Souji is still gorgeous. Souji is still ethereal. And Yosuke can feel that swooping in his stomach turn to something warm.

A terrible realization comes dawning over Yosuke's mind like a cold and wretched sun. The people in the photos – excluding Yosuke – though differing in dress, are the same. The things that Yosuke had noticed on the day of the pageant, when he'd stared and stared and stared at his friend like Souji was the most beautiful ghost he'd ever seen, every single one of them was still there. Even without the wig and the makeup and the clothing meant for women, every tiny detail that Yosuke had poured over was unmistakably present; they'd all been there the entire time, never not.  

Which means that Yosuke just hadn't noticed them until he'd stopped and stared. And stared. And stared.

Oh my fucking god.

---

There is a certain kind of quiet mania that comes from not having slept at all; a distant sort of grinding at the threads keeping a person from breaking down, from cracking like a gunshot. It's a mental time bomb, one that can lead to either exhaustion and collapse, or the utter shattering of all rational behavior and thought.

Yosuke sits on the living room couch, already fully dressed for school, watching the sun come up through the window as his body and mind are eerily calm. That internal timer is already running low.

He hasn't slept. After his brain-breaking revelation the night before, Yosuke had lain there, pulling out every memory he had of Souji and turning it over and over in his mind. Each interaction, each time he'd thrown his arm casually across the other boy's shoulders, the way it felt when they sat close enough that Souji's body heat warmed his side. So many times Yosuke had felt his breath hitch, his heart beat just a little bit quicker, but every time he just brushed it off. Adrenaline from talking over the murder case, the heat in the summer air, his now-absent crush on Rise kicking in when she did anything cute. (Because he'd noticed that, too; that his cheeks no longer flushed while thinking about her – not since she went from The Idol Risette to his friend Rise.)

Memory by memory, it felt like Yosuke's self-dug grave had gotten that much deeper, and as he pulled on that first thread of realization, more and more had come. Like untangling a spider web piece by fragile piece. It had left his brain in a jumble, keeping him awake for hours until he'd just given up on sleep altogether.

He hadn't been restless, per se, but there had been enough static in his head that it had eventually threatened to spill out into the dark of the bedroom, and, resigned to being awake forever, Yosuke had peeled back the covers and crawled silently out of bed. Grabbing his wrinkled uniform from the day before and slipping it on, he'd gone to grab his toothbrush and a comb out of the bathroom (fervently not looking at either the mirror or the shower,) and headed downstairs to use the bathroom there instead. Slowly, with all the time in the world, he finished getting ready for school on autopilot, even bothering to make – and eat – a bowl of cereal. From an outside perspective he might have looked relatively normal; internally, however, there was nothing but empty, dissociated quiet. Still waters, deceptive with their glassy surface, poised and ready to drop into the churning rapids below.

Yosuke checks the time on his phone, still on airplane mode.

He stands from the couch without a sound, collects his coat and school bag, and slips out the door into the frigid November morning.

(His reflection in the entryway mirror turns to watch him as he leaves.)

---

He cuts through the back way to school again, though this time he doesn't drag his feet; instead, he stalks down the side streets with his hands shoved in his coat pockets and his shoulders hunched. The lack of sleep and the cold feeling now lingering just at the base of his skull both serve to sharpen the knife's edge of emotional instability he's currently teetering on. He feels... nothing. And everything. All at once. He feels like he could run full-throttle straight at somebody and deck them square in the jaw; he also feels like he could break into hysterical laughter at any moment, or maybe tears. It's hard to regulate what's going on in his everything, because his head is both empty and far too full from all the thinking he'd done the night before, but it's also quiet, which is never a good sign. Normally his brain is too loud, but today...

Today is different.

Today is bad.

If he had to try and put words to it, Yosuke would have probably described his mood (if only to himself) as fragile. It's like the wall of ice that had been blocking him from his thoughts and emotions before has turned to tiny, thin splinters. Sharp and cold and so delicate that one wrong move will shatter them – but they'll also slice everything in their path to ribbons.

The slow, methodical trudge to Yasogami High actually takes far less time than he means for it to, leaving him ample time to loiter unseen around the side of the gate, just out of view of any students passing through it. Somehow, (and he's not sure just which god to thank for this,) he hasn't seen Souji yet, either in flashes on the way as Yosuke ducked away from the normal path, or up already near the entrance. It means that Souji is either already inside or he's still en route. (And Yosuke hopes it's the former, because he's not sure just how well that wafer-thin pane of frost is going to hold. Or, for how long.)

It's just his luck, then, that he catches a glimpse of starlight silver and bleached blond coming up the crest of the hill. Yosuke digs his teeth so hard into his cheeks he can taste the coppery tang of splitting skin – Souji and Kanji are walking together. Again.

So easily replaced.

Yosuke bites viciously into the flesh inside mouth and turns to stalk into the school before either of the other boys – so close together they almost touch – can see him.

---

“Hanamura!”

Yosuke twitches, jerked from the ominous quiet inside his own achingly-empty head. Turning, (slowly, stiffly, with the faintest spark of mania waiting to be fueled,) he turns to see the bearer of the voice that had shouted at him from the stairwell behind. Chie stands on the second floor landing with her hands on her hips, glaring up at him with a look so cold it could rival her Bufu. Yukiko appears just two steps below and finishes the climb to stop beside her, a stern expression locked on her face as if made of iron resolve. Neither one of them looks to be in a forgiving mood.

Yosuke wants to just turn back around and ignore them, wants to say 'fuck it,' and just throw away what's left of his friendships so he can go back to the blissful emptiness of rock-fucking-bottom. It'd be easier that way, and he has neither the time nor the energy to even begin to untangle the knot of mistakes he's made this week.

But the looks on his friends' faces (Chie, especially,) tell him they aren't going to let this go, even for now, so, begrudgingly, Yosuke stands and waits for one of them to speak. They don't disappoint.

Chie, upon seeing him pause, marches up to him with Yukiko hot on her heels and together the pair of them back him up until he's nearly hit the wall. “Alright, you dick, we need to talk.” From around her, Yukiko steps into position and stays at Chie's side, looking for all the world like a disappointed mother as she silently lets Chie do the talking.

Somehow, Yosuke finds his voice. Somehow, despite that momentary fight-or-flight-or freeze instinct when the girls had stormed towards him, Yosuke is calm. (It isn't the normal kind, either, it's the kind of calm that can only be found when someone has reached the threshold of just how much adrenaline their body can handle and they loop back around to apathy.) “Can it wait till we don't have class?” he asks, and the voice that leaves him is so devoid of life and emotion that it actually makes Chie balk. She and Yukiko share a disquieted look, like they aren't sure whether to be startled or mad and Yosuke takes their moment of distraction to try and slip to the side where there's still space to move away.

This snaps the pair out of their hesitation. Chie blocks his path with an outstretched arm, open palm smacking the wall hard enough – though not violently, to his mild surprise – to make a soft 'thwap.' Yukiko, still silent, moves to block Yosuke's remaining escape route on the other side.

“No,” Chie hisses, “it can't. Because the moment we let you out of our sight you're just going to run off into nowhere and go back to avoiding everyone, just like you've been doing for days. We're tired of it, Yosuke.”

Yukiko nods. “I know we're not as close as you and Souji-kun, but you're our friend, too, and this behavior needs to stop.” She strengthens her stance - and it is frightening.

Yosuke can't meet either of their eyes. “...I don't know what you're talking about.”

Chie makes a sound low in her throat. “Like hell you don't; you've been totally MIA with barely a word to anyone, you've been acting shady as hell whenever someone tries to talk to you, and on top of that you've been straight up avoiding Souji – which is insane, considering you two're normally joined at the freaking hip!”

Yosuke must be doing something with his face, because Chie squints at him and says, “Yeeaaaah, don't think we haven't noticed.”

Something sniggers inside Yosuke's head and it makes his vision pulse a faint, sickly yellow. His lip curls in a barely-there sneer. “Look,” he says, a little more life in his words this time. He smacks at Chie's arm with the back of his hand. “It's nothing, will you get off my back? I'm just having a bad week.”

“Bullshit,” Chie growls in response.

From the corner of his eye, Yosuke can see Yukiko take in a long, carefully-controlled breath, as if she's silently counting down from ten to keep herself collected. “This is more than just a 'bad week,' Yosuke-kun,” she says, and the evenness of her tone belies the fire he knows she can conjure during battle. “You've been rude, crass, evasive, and downright belligerent...”

(Yosuke isn't sure he knows what all those words mean but he's pretty sure she's right on every one.)

“Even on your worst days you've never been this bad.”

Yosuke is so, so tired. He's tired of feeling like he's being buffeted by the wind that's supposed to be on his side, unable to find his footing and ready to fall at any given moment. He's tired of the wildly swinging pendulum of his emotions sending him back and forth from feeling everything to feeling nothing. (And deeper, deeper down, he's tired of people leaving him behind, even more so of driving people away; it's a skill he's never asked for but has somehow mastered nonetheless.)

He doesn't answer Yukiko's spot-on accusations. He doesn't answer Chie's too-observant glower. He doesn't look at either of them, he instead stares off to the side, unseeing, just past the arm that blocks his escape.

Chie lets out another sound of frustration and leans further into his space, craning her neck to somehow stare him down despite their height difference. “Well?” she demands, “Anything you wanna say?”

Yosuke takes a long, deep breath through his nose, letting it out so slowly that the yellow creeping into the edges of his eyes dots with black. With the exhale, he feels the last of his energy – physical, emotional, mental – drain away. It hollows him out with each passing second, until he's nothing more than a husk resigned to his fate of forever being the King of Fucking Up; he's already pushed everything this far towards the edge, he might as well take that last step over.

“...Yeah, actually,” he says, and it's a lifeless drawl, almost entirely devoid of anything. (He sees Yukiko stiffen and Chie flinch in his peripherals.) Exhausted, he lolls his head forward and finally turns his eyes to Chie's face, fixing them just above her eyebrows because he can't focus them any lower. False eye contact, something he's picked up in his time working at Junes.

He takes another deep breath, feeling that disconnecting wall of ice closing over his heart, and says, “You should probably lay off the meat, Chie, cuz you're not doing your thick thighs any favors.”

Yukiko gasps.

Beside her, Chie looks stunned, jaw dropped and mouth open like it's trying to form words her head can't find.

(Yosuke tastes bile in the back of his throat.)

Disgusted with himself and just wanting to not be here, Yosuke tries to use the girls' frozen reactions to his advantage. He isn't sure he can move or duck under Chie's arm, so he makes a break for it the opposite direction and attempts to slide past Yukiko – only for her to snap back to attention just as he's almost free.

“Yo--!”

But Yosuke is too far gone. Instead of letting himself be forced back against the wall, he doubles down, gives in to the fatalistic inevitability that he's going to be losing more than just Souji at this point. (Good, he thinks sadly; I don't deserve any of them, anyway.)

Swerving, scraping the wall with his shoulder to try and get as much space between himself and Yukiko as he can, Yosuke reaches out a hand (desperately hoping he misses,) and makes a pinching gesture at her skirt, causing her to jerk back and away. “See? Here's a perfect set right he--”

His face erupts in red-hot pain.

Yosuke staggers backwards, hitting the back of his head against the cold concrete of the wall with an audible 'thump.' Thoroughly bewildered, he blinks over at the space he had just been and sees Yukiko, hand raised, stance wide, and completely, utterly livid.

Oh, he thinks, slowly reaching up to touch his scalded cheek. I've been slapped.

“You!” Chie snaps, just as Yukiko whispers, “How dare you,” in the most bone-chillingly quiet voice he's ever heard.

He... may have gone too far this time.

Chie stalks forward, so close he has to shallow his breathing to keep his chest from touching hers when he inhales. She turns her face up at him and for a moment, through the exhaustion and the resignation and the apathy, he truly believes her to be capable of tearing his throat out with her bare hands.

It's almost impressive.  

“What the hell is wrong with you?” she snarls, “You've been acting like a jackass all week!”

Yosuke focuses on Chie's cheekbones as best he can with her so close; he practically has to go crosseyed to do so, even without meeting her murderous glare. It's strange, how he's aware that his cheek is in pain, (and rightfully so, he deserved that slap,) just as he's aware that on any other day before this week he'd be terrified for his safety in a situation like this. He remembers just how hard Chie can kick, having felt it firsthand in delicate places. But his energy is spent at this point, and all the awareness in the world can't conjure up the ability to be anything other than drained.

So he doesn't react, just looks back at his (probably former) friend and huffs, “Chill out, Chie, it was just a joke.”

Both girls visibly tense, shoulders squared and backs straight. Yukiko brings her hand up like she's going to slap him again, rearing it back as she hisses, “It wasn't funny!”

Chie, simultaneously, bares her teeth in vicious rage. “Like hell it was!” she barks, her own voice layering over Yukiko's outburst.

Yosuke just lolls his head to the side slightly and focuses on empty air. “Yeah, well,” he drawls, unable to find the right emotion to put into his voice. “You're girls, of course you wouldn't get it; it's guy humor.”

Chie leans impossibly closer. “You think you're such hot shit,” she seethes, and her tone has gone icy, blisteringly cold. She jabs a finger into his chest hard enough for him to feel it bruise. “We put up with your nasty 'jokes' and your weird staring because you're our friend, but there's a limit, Hanamura!” Her lips curl, the finger digging into his sternum like a silent threat. “And you're freaking pushing it.”

Yukiko leans in as well, her hand still raised and ready, a bow string held taut. “Girls don't like it when you say things like that,” she says, so dark and even that it raises the hairs on the back of Yosuke's neck – but even though his body physically, instinctively reacts, the hollow pit in his chest where the ice now sits keeps his heart and mind numb. He doesn't look at her as she says, “If your brand of humor makes other people uncomfortable, then it isn't really humor at all, it's gross.”

There are people starting to collect around them; Yosuke can see them moving closer just past the haze of his unfocused vision. He can't tell if he cares of not, doesn't think he does anymore. Everything Chie and Yukiko are saying is too right, too justified for him to fight back or defend himself. I deserve this, he thinks, hears his own voice echoing like there's another nearly identical one layering beneath it.

A few other students, faces unrecognizable, gather just a bit too close to the direction he's been staring in. He doesn't feel like letting them think he's acknowledged them, so he rolls his head lazily back so he can pretend to face to the two girls in front of him. He's just going back to fixing his eyes on Yukiko's shoulder when a swath of silver catches in his vision – just barely, just enough to make him look up before he can consciously think about it. He refocuses, and feels his heart come to a painful halt inside his ribs.

Souji is standing there, looking at Yosuke as if he's never seen him before. His eyes are wide and confused, thin brows pulled so low that they're actually visible below his hair; his lips are slightly parted as if he's been caught mid-gasp.

Yosuke stares back at him for a long, panicked moment. A slow, frigid kind of adrenaline begins to seep into this veins, making his hands and knees shake even though he can't feel it. It kick-starts his heart back to life and suddenly it's pounding as he looks into Souji's eyes for the first time in he can't even remember how long, seeing no trace of recognition in the other boy's face. Only pain. Only confusion and betrayal. Souji looks at him like Yosuke is a stranger now, gaze boring into his own like he's looking for someone familiar but just can't find them, can't figure out who Yosuke is.

He saw, the voice that had layered his own whispers, hissing though laughing, jagged glee.

Souji saw.

The floor drops out from under Yosuke's feet and he switches to autopilot to keep from falling, somehow managing to stay upright through sheer force of unconscious will. Chie and Yukiko must notice the change, because he can peripherally see them pause, turning their heads to see what he's looking at. It's enough.

Moving feels like he's underwater, drowning, but Yosuke sees his chance and snatches at it with trembling fingers; as the girls are distracted by Souji, Yosuke pushes himself sideways along the wall until he's no longer pinned by Chie's proximity. Once there's space to do so, he shoves his way forward, sticking out an arm and breaking through the line that Yukiko and Chie's bodies have made. They part in their shock, and he's able to slip between them at last.

“Whatever,” he hears himself say. A verbal barrier, a wall to keep them all at bay while he books it to something resembling safety. He reaches up and palms the headphones resting around his neck. “You guys throw your hissy fit, I'm goin' to class.” He tugs the headphones up as he takes a couple long, quick strides out of their stationary reach, shoving them over his ears without actually turning on any music – using the comforting weight at the sides of his head as a shield. If they try and call out after him, he can just pretend he can't hear them and keep walking.

He makes it all the way to the classroom without being caught; he doesn't dare look at Yukiko, Chie, or Souji (especially not Souji,) as the three of them enter the room. Yukiko first, then the others, and Yosuke busies himself with his school bag until the sound of the door opening signals the arrival of the teacher and the start of class just moments later.

Yosuke keeps his head ducked down the entire morning, just in case of the the girls decides to risk a glance back in his direction. He can't tell with his eyes glued to his desk, but he thinks that none of them do.

(He doesn't know whether he should be relieved or not.)

---

Yosuke is up and moving almost before the lunch bell even rings. Like he's done for the past week, he grabs his stuff and hightails it out the back of the room, pointedly not looking and any of the friends he's managed to alienate in only a handful of days. Headphones snug over his ears and player in his hand, he takes the steps up to the third floor, then the roof, two at a time. It's only once he's up in the cold air and alone that he feels like he can breathe.

Picking a spot as far away from the door as possible, Yosuke drops to the ground and leans his back against the frigid metal links of the fence, barely even feeling the chill through his clothes. The breath he's finally caught starts to pick up – only for a moment – and he has to bring his knees up to the his chest, hands over his eyes and fingers twisting in his hair as he ducks his head and pulls in lungful after lungful of air. It passes just as quickly as it came.

What do I do now?

Despite the hollow feeling encompassing his heart, Yosuke still feels the twinge of anxiety that had brought about the thirty-second panic attack; it sticks to his blood cells, causing his palms to sweat and go clammy in the nippy November breeze. He brings them to his mouth and cups them over his lips, breathing into them to try and warm them back up. It doesn't work.

He sighs and drops his hands back into his lap, tucking them between the bend of his knees. He didn't bother bringing lunch with him again today, though between the rare breakfast that morning and the churning in his stomach he isn't so sure he'd be able to eat anything anyway. Still, even a snack would have provided him something to do with his hands, and so Yosuke is left with nothing but his music and his surroundings to occupy his time. He frowns – being alone with his thoughts recently has been anything but good, and today having gone the way that it has so far, he can feel the incoming uphill battle against his brain. He cranks the volume up on his player in hopes of drowning it all out before it begins, but turns the whole thing off and tugs the headphones from his ears a minute or so later, not wanting to associate any of his favorite songs with the maelstrom already brewing inside his mind.

It starts with a replay. Every single thing he'd said and done that morning in the hallway with Chie and Yukiko. It twists at his gut with each image, each remembered word he'd vomited out like a bio-weapon; he barely recognizes himself in his own memories, and honestly that is the part that scares him the most. No wonder Souji had looked at him that way.

And oh, if that hadn't been the worst part of it all. Yukiko and Chie he already hated himself for, already felt sick over how he'd treated them both since even before this all began, starting with the festival. He wishes he could go back in time and stop himself from ever putting their names down – all of them – because not only was it just a shitty, immature thing to do, but it also violated their trust. He sees that now, and it feels like a hammer to the head, because with everything that he's turned into in the days since, he knows it all started with that one first terrible decision. Most of the low points in his life have started with terrible decisions, he just hadn't been aware enough to put the pieces together until now. Had things been different, Yosuke wonders if Souji would have been proud of him.

That, however, is the thing that brings Yosuke's already-simmering self hatred to a rolling boil. Of all the people he's hurt so far, Souji is the one that makes Yosuke feel like he's beyond all hope of redemption. Souji had been his partner, his best friend, and Yosuke, stupid, stupid Yosuke had taken that bond and thrown it right in the garbage. They were supposed to be equals, but Yosuke had been too busy sinking into his own head, too mired in self pity and selfishly wanting things to go back to a normal that likely didn't even exist anymore. Not after all of this. For all the maturing Yosuke feels he may have done – the only silver lining in the storm that he himself created – focusing only on his own hurt and blaming Souji for it is by far the most childish thing he's done.

(Inside his skull, stretched out as though sliding into Yosuke's skin like a glove, he can almost feel something like a head being tilted, an eyebrow raised. There is a quiet, contemplative, 'hmmm,' as if his mind is thinking thoughts without him. He doesn't know how to interpret the sensation, so he tucks it away on the back burner for now.)

Somewhere past the door leading back into the school, Yosuke faintly hears the warning bell sounding, signaling the end of lunch and the resumption of classes for the day.

Yosuke doesn't move.

He sits there and leans his head back against the fence in utter exhaustion; he doesn't have the energy or will power to get up and go back inside. He doesn't want to feel the others' eyes on him when he walks in the door, or, equally painful, being entirely unacknowledged instead. Having done the same to Souji for days,Yosuke will admit his hypocrisy in that he doesn't know if he'd survive having his former partner do the same to him - even if Souji had scared the shit out of him, neglected to communicate with him, left him to wonder and worry and want after the pageant.

Then again, some part of Yosuke quietly relents, Souji... really isn't obligated to tell Yosuke anything. And while their leader should have at least been courteous enough to let someone know he was still alive, he'd eventually told Naoto. Which had hurt Yosuke – pretty badly, in fact – to not be the one Souji had talked to first, but at least he'd talked to someone. (Even though Yosuke is still adamantly sure the “food poisoning” excuse had been complete bullshit.) But... it wouldn't be fair to expect Souji to never have secrets; after all, Yosuke still has secrets of his own, even after confronting his shadow.

Some are just far, far more shameful than others.

Thoughts swirling, Yosuke can feel a headache beginning to build behind his eyes. He keeps going around and around; he's mad at Souji, he's not mad at Souji, he's mad at himself, he's not mad at himself for being hurt – on and on and on. It's a loop that doesn't seem to have an end, and it's making Yosuke dizzy.

He sighs again, and there's an echoing sigh inside his skull, albeit one that sounds far more frustrated than his own audible one. He's too tired to suss it out, though, and because all this thinking is starting to spiral, he digs his player back out and tries one more time to drown out the thoughts with music. He's relived when his attention stays on the lyrics and doesn't go careening off again; he closes his eyes and lets himself go blank for a little while, almost-but-not-quite dozing, tucked away in his little patch of rooftop in the brisk November air.

Sometime later – he doesn't know how long – Yosuke is pulled from his trance by the sound of a far-off school bell. His player apparently ran out of battery long ago, because the screen is dark and his headphones silent. Yosuke feels like shit.

He's chilly to the point where his skin doesn't really have much feeling anymore; his neck is stiff from the cold and the position it'd been kept in while he was out of it. His ears ache a little, too, and it's probably more from the headphones than the weather. Groaning, Yosuke sits up and peels the headphones off, setting them in his lap and rolling his neck to try and get his full range of motion back. He feels something pop. With another groan, he makes it slowly to his feet and stretches, every muscle in his body protesting as he does.

Fully aware that he hadn't gone back in after lunch, Yosuke has absolutely no idea what time it could possibly be; judging by the position of the sun over the treetops, however, and the sound of the bell from earlier, he can guess that it's probably well into the afternoon. “Fuck,” he mutters to the empty rooftop. He's more than likely missed most of the rest of the school day, though if that's the case then he can't bring himself to care. There was nothing waiting for him back in the classroom anymore, anyway.

Reluctant still to make his way inside lest someone catch him, Yosuke takes his time gathering his bag, tucking his player away, setting his headphones carefully on top because, well, they aren't any use to him right now, are they? It's only once he's run out of stuff to do that he finally fishes his pone out of his pocket to check the time.

Weirdly enough, there are no new messages – which, he isn't surprised at but also is? If no one had wanted to talk to him after that morning, he would have understood. However, with as rightfully angry as they both had been, he would have expected there to be something from Chie at the very least – even if not from today, then something else from last night, surely. Curious and a little uneasy, Yosuke stares at his phone until the screen goes dark. Oh, he realizes finally; he'd forgotten he'd put it on airplane mode the night before.

(He'd wondered why his phone had been so blissfully, ominously quiet all night.)

He taps the keys lightly to get the screen to wake back up and goes to take it off airplane at last – only to hesitate just before pressing the button, thumb hovering as Yosuke chews on his lip. His gut curdles. Whether there are a slew of missed texts or none at all, Yosuke knows that whatever is waiting for him once he hits confirm isn't going to be good. He has to brace himself; he just isn't sure what for.

With a deep breath in and a quick breath out, Yosuke takes the plunge and hits the button, not looking at the screen as his thumb presses down. He doesn't want to see just yet. At first there is nothing – no belated notification sound, no vibrations, nothing. He thinks maybe he's safe for the moment, simultaneously unsettled by the lack of any apparent messages...

...Until his phone vibrates, just once, in his hand.

Yosuke's breathing sticks in his throat for half a breath, head instinctively tilting to look down at the notification that just jostled his anxiety. It isn't from Chie, which is not what he expected, nor is it from Yukiko, which also would not have surprised him. It isn't even from Teddie, whining that Yosuke had left without partaking in their new morning ritual of communal teeth-brushing. No, the sender, devastatingly, is Souji.

Prtnr: I'm sorry. I won't bother you anymore.

Everything stops.

[crazy-lazy-elder-sims]

Vent about my days in fashion major and how horribly i was treated by my professors because i wasnt super girly and happy all the time.

Woke up today with the memory of my trying to explain to my fashion professors my idea for my final project that unisex clothes and patterns are much more sustainable for the environment and for the fashion industry and they should be introduced to the market where i live in north Africa only to be immediately met with them loudly whispering to each other in a disgusted tone that they knew i wasnt "normal" aka androgynous or non binary or not really a woman (they meant trans)

and that they knew that there was somthing wrong with me fr9m tge first year of university cause i didn't fully try to look and act and think 100% feminine (i was born female) and how they knew that i was "diffrent" and that i would try to force my disgusting differences on them through my projects...

The plot twist was at that point to everyone around me i was fully straight and 100% identified as a cis woman and i never even eluded to idea that i was non binary.

what they were seeing was my depressed self not dressing well or taking care of my looks or brushing my hair and they just assumed i was trying to be a boy . They are the most disgusting people i have met to date tbh.

Ofc i ended up going forward with my idea and presented it as my final project and i got an okayish grade with side looks from everyone because they trash talked me to everyone, because how dare i suggest men and women dress in the same clothes even thou i clearly showed in my photo shoots that the same piece od clothes looked diffrent on the two bodies because it was the body type that shaped the clothes in this collection in particular and gave them an identity not the other way around and that non of this is the point its that ITS SUSTAINABLE AND ENVIRONMENTALLY FRIENDLY AND CAN STOP FAST FASHION AND MICRO TRENDS and greatly minimize the pollution from the fashion industry but no they all just pushed that to the side and assumed i was trans 👁👄👁

Now i always had a very complicated relationship with my gender as i have always considered myself pretty androgynous but i never expressed this out loud or in the way of dressing and never came out as its dangerous where i live so i really tried to ignore all that and just focus on my projects and my ideas but they (the fucking professor) couldn't get past that and they actively hid me and my projects away and gave me less time to present and when the time came for brands and companies from the outside to come in and view our projects and maybe give us a chance to work with them if they like the concept my professors steered them away from me and told them i was one of the not creative students and that they dont think am gonna continue in this field or add value to the brands just to bad mouth me and steer them away so they (in thier heads)save thier image from being tarnished by a potentially LGBTQIA+ person.

The second plot twist and the bigger one is the guy they ended up pushing so hard that he became a famous designer and became a famous contestant on the arabic fashion runway show that was watched by millions he was gay but also was outed last year for asking nudes from models that are minors trying to hookup with model minors and sexual assault on male AND female models and threaning to end careers of young models if they refused to hookup with him aka rape.

And i got completely turned off from fashion design for 3 years after paying all the money i saved up for collage to study properly and i became unable to deal with society abd people like this here and just hid away in my room for 3 years being completely depressed and contemplating suicide not even beeing able to hand sew a single hole shut in my clothes because i have a breakdown and remeber how i was treated.

This week am starting to get the itch to design again and i want to make somthing but i just don't know how the fuck am i gonna manage when 1. Its pretty expensive and i barely have money 2. I am genuinely scared.

Yeah just a genral vent and stuff nothing to see here lol