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Yosuke watched the minutes hand on the clock ticking down to the hour; 55, 56, 57… and still the seat in front of him remained surprisingly empty. It wasn’t unheard of for Yosuke to come racing through the door right as the bell rang, sweaty and out of breath, but Yu was always at least ten minutes early — probably more, really, but Yosuke had never been there to confirm it. So it was completely bizarre for Morooka to walk in and drop his bag on his desk with Yu’s still empty. Maybe he was sick? Yosuke was tempted to text him and check, but he hesitated; if he was sleeping a bug off, he didn’t want to wake him up. He was spared the decision by Yu barging through the door, panting with his bangs in complete disarray.
“Sorry,” he said, bowing to Morooka, but Morooka was all too happy to finally have an excuse to chew out the golden boy he clearly resented.
“Sorry? You disrespect this establishment of learning and all you have to say is sorry?!” he spat out — unfortunately quite literally. Yosuke was so grateful he didn’t sit in the front row.
Yu opened his mouth, but before he could respond, Morooka continued. “I’m giving you two hours of detention tonight. Maybe that’ll teach you some manners!”
Yu’s face flashed through a variety of emotions — surprise, then a flash of anger, before finally settling into disgruntled annoyance. Most people wouldn’t have noticed; it was barely more than a minute widening of the eyes, the softest draw of eyebrows, but Yosuke knew his partner too well to miss it.
“Fine,” Yu finally said with a dismissive toss of his head to resettle his bangs, going to his seat without another glance towards Morooka. Yosuke swallowed, hard. Yu was invariably polite and soft-spoken outside the TV; for him, this was as good as a rebellious door-slam, and it was sparking something in Yosuke that he hadn’t known was there before.
“Make it three!”
Yu didn’t reply, and Morooka seemed set to keep going, but one of their classmates chose that moment to ask about getting an extension on the homework — a particularly foolish choice of timing, to Yosuke — and he was distracted by yelling at her about the “lazy youth of today who think they’ll get everything just handed to them.”
The rest of the morning passed as it usually did, full of Morooka’s spit-filled rants on subjects ranging from Junes to young people these days to politics. When lunch finally came around, Yu, Yosuke, Chie and Yukiko made their way to the roof for a shared meal of bentos and instant ramen.
“Why does Yosuke always get to share your lunch?” Chie whined as she peeled the lid back on her ramen, clearly eyeing the chunks of steak in Yosuke’s bento box.
“Cause I’m his best friend, duh!” Yosuke replied defensively. “And anyway it’s not true, he shared with you on Monday.”
Chie glared at him, and he glared right back. Maybe Yu did share more often with him, but that wasn’t weird for best friends.
Making out on Yu’s couch three nights a week, that, admittedly, was a bit weirder, but they kept the curtains drawn and the door locked, so Chie had absolutely no reason to be looking at him so suspiciously. Yosuke put a ridiculous amount of effort into making sure their relationship stayed a secret every day — not that he would have minded if the others knew, but Yu thought it would throw off the team dynamics — and he wasn’t about to be accidentally outed by a carnivorous beast.
Yu, who’d been watching the exchange with light amusement dancing in his eyes, finally interrupted it by handing Yosuke a pair of chopsticks.
“I’ll bring you something with steak in it tomorrow, alright?” he told Chie, and she settled back down, mollified.
“You don’t have to,” she said half-heartedly.
“It’s ok.” Yu smiled at her. “I want to.”
When they’d finished their meals, Chie and Yukiko got up to go to the ladies’ room and do whatever it was they did back at their desks — gossip, probably, although Yukiko might actually do homework. Chie… less likely. This left Yu and Yosuke alone on the roof, save for the omnipresent girl with the obsessive passion for weather. She was too far to hear them though, if she’d even cared to listen to their non-meteorological discussion.
“Sooo,” Yosuke drawled out as their previous conversation about new equipment purchases reached a lull, “detention, huh?” He leaned back on his hands and raised his eyebrows at Yu.
“Ugh.” Yu scowled. “I was supposed to work at the daycare today, Eri will be expecting me. I hope I can at least get some homework done in there. I need to get some money for equipment for Rise, too. Maybe I can work at Shiroku’s tonight… I really don’t have time for this.” He looked more noticeably anxious than Yosuke would have expected for such a harmless situation.
“Hey, partner,” he said as he drew closer and laid a comforting hand on his shoulder, “it’s ok. The world won’t end just because you got detention one time. There’s no one in the TV, there’s no rush.”
Yu looked at his hand and heaved a deep sigh as he reached up to squeeze it, the stress leaking out of his face. “I know, you’re right. It’s going to mess with my entire calendar though. Damn that Morooka, I was barely even late.”
Yosuke’s eyes grew wide. If silent, rebellious Yu did unexpected things to his insides, it was nothing compared to swearing rebellious Yu. He cast a glance towards the weather girl, but she was still entirely absorbed by her notebook, so he shifted the hand on Yu’s shoulder to wrap around his neck, tugging him closer.
“Partner,” he breathed, licking his lips. Yu was startled by the intimate touch, mouth gaping the slightest bit open, which he was about to use to his advantage when the loud ringing of the five-minute bell caused them both to jolt apart. The moment was broken; the weather girl had noticed them and was waving a friendly hello as she went to head back downstairs, and Yosuke’s sudden awareness of how close he’d come to being discovered completely cooled off his ardors.
Yosuke was lucky that their teachers didn’t call on him that afternoon; he found himself entirely ignoring the lessons as he replayed Yu’s swearing and angry look over and over in his head, at first as they had actually happened, and then more and more embellished, until Yu was staring down Morooka like he stared down shadows in the TV, slamming his hand into his desk… Maybe they could meet up in the TV world one of these days instead of in Yu’s bedroom?
Maybe not. That was foolish, and dangerous, and increased risk of discovery via Teddie by about 200%... but it might still be worth it.
The final bell rang at last, Yu heading off to detention without a word while Yosuke made his way towards Junes for his afternoon shift. He was almost past the school gate when his phone rang.
“Yosuke?”
“Hi dad, I’m on my way,” Yosuke replied as he checked his watch — he wasn’t even late, for once.
“Actually, I’m giving you today off.”
“Huh?”
“One of the part timers asked for an extra shift, said her water heater broke and she needs to pay for repairs? Or maybe her cat was sick. I wasn’t really paying attention… You don’t mind, right?”
“Oh, um, no. I’ll see you tonight, then?”
Yosuke felt a bit lost as he hung up. Most times he was excited to get some extra time off, usually finding some way to spend it with Yu, but tonight that was obviously impossible. He supposed he could have headed home and played some video games, but what he wanted… well, what he really wanted right now was to see Yu. But Yu would still be in detention for — he checked his watch again — another two hours and 45 minutes. Then he’d probably head off to his part time job, and Yosuke wouldn’t get to see him.
He frowned, looking back towards the school for a moment before finally making a decision and heading back in. The library had a pretty good selection of comics; he could hang out there, read a bit, and walk Yu to wherever he was going next. Maybe they’d even have time to stop at Aiya’s if he was lucky.
An hour later, Yosuke was in the middle of an exciting action scene between a strange, over-emotional superhero and a terribly slimy villain, when his phone buzzed in his pocket.
Rise OMG did yu senpai rly get detention?!??
Yosuke ya he wuz l8 to class this am n he spoke bk to morooka
Rise i knew he had a secret rebel side!!!!
he’s so coooooolllll
Yosuke bit back a smile, looking down at his phone. He still found it completely wild that someone would choose him over a literal idol, that he was dating the kind of guy idols wanted in the first place. He’d told Yu as much — more than once — but Yu wouldn’t hear a word of it. Yosuke had stopped once he’d realised bringing it up always ended in Yu complimenting him relentlessly until he was blushing so hard he thought he might burst blood vessels. The craziest part of it all was that it all seemed completely sincere; Yu really, truly believed that the best person he could have picked to date was Yosuke, and that was something Yosuke was both grateful for and confused by every single day.
He tried to turn back to his comic book, but nagging guilt ate at him, keeping him from getting into the story. He was going to be here for at least another hour anyway; he might as well get his homework out of the way. Yu deserved a boyfriend who had at least some hope of getting into the same university as him, after all.
He packed up his books an hour and a half later, having made surprisingly good progress. It turned out that an absence of distractions, both ursine and otherwise, was rather good for his ability to focus.
Leaving the library, he made his way to the classroom detention was held in — one he knew fairly well, mostly from his earlier days in Inaba; nowadays he made an effort not to get in too much trouble, since that could impact their TV world outings. He leaned against a wall by the stairs a short distance away, waiting for Yu.
Yu came out looking exasperated. He was juggling his phone and agenda as he did, and didn’t notice Yosuke till the last moment.
“Yosuke! What are you still doing here?”
Yosuke shrugged, trying to look casual. “Just waiting for you.” Yu seemed ready to question him further, but it wasn’t as though he had any sort of longer answer, so he changed the subject. “Did you get your homework done?”
“No!” Yu hissed. “We had to write some stupid essay about how sorry we were for our misbehavior. For being late not even five minutes. It’s fucking ridiculous!”
Yosuke, who had kicked off the wall to follow Yu downstairs, froze. Yu turned back after a few steps. “What’s up?”
“Nothing’s…” Yosuke shook his head. There was a time for words, and a time for action, and this was definitely the second kind. He stepped forward, grasping Yu’s wrist, and tugged him forcefully behind him, up the stairs and onto the roof, devoid of its weather girl this late in the day. He didn’t even wait for the door to slam shut behind them before he pinned Yu against the wall so forcefully he wheezed. Not giving him a chance to complain, Yosuke put his hands on the wall on both sides of his face, framing him in before leaning in to kiss him feverishly.
Yu responded quickly after his initial surprise, matching Yosuke’s eagerness. When Yosuke pulled back for a breath though, he quirked an eyebrow.
“Why…?”
Yosuke shook his head, biting his lower lip. “You are so hot when you swear, partner.”
Yu flushed a bit at his words. He looked down at the floor, then back up to meet Yosuke’s eyes, a steelish glint of determination in his expression. “So, you think it’s pretty fucking—” there was a slight wobble in his voice as he said the word, the mildest touch of embarrassment, but it was no less effective on Yosuke “—attractive if I talk like this?”
“God yes,” Yosuke breathed, crushing his body back against his boyfriend and sliding his hands underneath his shirt. Yu responded in kind, his fingertips more than warm upon Yosuke’s back, and he lost himself in the headiness of Yu’s lips and tongue and hands.
It wasn’t until Yu pushed him gently back, breathing hard, that he realised he had his knee shoved between Yu’s legs, rocking up against him. He stepped back quickly, blushing and apologizing.
“Sorry, was that too much? I got kinda carried away.”
“... No, no, just… we’re in public. Somebody could see us,” he said with a tilt of his head towards the soccer field, which was far enough to grant them anonymity if someone looked over, but not far enough for them to be hidden.
“Oh, right. Sorry.” It was a good point, a very good point, but Yosuke couldn’t help but feel bereft at the absence of Yu’s body against his. “Uh, did you still want to go to that job tonight, or…?”
“Wanna come over?” Yu cut in hurriedly.
“Yes.”
They were almost past the floodplain on their way to Yu’s house when Yosuke suddenly remembered an important question he’d meant to ask, before parts other than his brain had taken control of him.
“So, why were you late this morning anyway? Made an overly elaborate breakfast for Nanako?”
“Oh!” Yu gasped. “I almost forgot!” He took Yosuke’s hand, and walked quickly back the way they’d come. As they neared the bushes by the far end of the floodplain, Yu slowed down, looking around carefully, and Yosuke had a sinking feeling that—yep, there went Yu, kneeling by a bush, and—
“The cat I’ve been feeding had kittens! Aren’t they adorable?!”
Yu’s eyes glowed with happiness as he held the tiny ball of fur up to his face, leaning his nose towards it in the hope that the rat-like little creature with its eyes barely open would nuzzle it.
Ah, yes. A true badass. A lady killer. An intimidating rebel who —
Yu cooed to the kitten, and Yosuke finally broke, laughing as he crushed Yu in his arms, being mindful of the kitten.
“Huh? Is something wrong?” Yu asked, not seeming to understand why Yosuke was holding him and not one of the kittens.
“Oh, partner,” Yosuke replied, leaning his head on Yu’s shoulder and freeing a hand to scratch the kitten’s chin. “I love you so much.”