Work Text:
Yosuke talks a lot.
Not that it’s strictly a bad thing. It’s merely a casual unvoiced observation, obvious as a fact of the universe to him. The sun rises in the east, one comes before two, and Yosuke Hanamura will find some way to fill the gap in between everyone else’s words. Souji himself don’t mind the rise and fall of his friend’s tones in animated discussion, the hum of a wordless song to the strains of music escaping the headphones snapped securely over Yosuke’s ears. The tap-tap-tap of shoes against the tiles is a sign that all’s right with the world, even as the world around them grows stranger by the floor.
Souji tilts his head fractionally, gaze keen and searching–for what, even he’s not entirely sure of yet. There’s nothing hard about it. A lift to the corner of his mouth, amusement and attention wrapped in a half-smile, is all his friend really needs to spin forth a conversation about anything.
Yosuke talks a lot, which makes the four times he falls silent when he could speak all the more important.
–
The first of these moments is early on in their friendship, not long after Souji’s arrival in Inaba and not long before the words “TV” and “World” fit together as if commonsensical. As if a bunch of teenagers could do something–anything, besides grasping at scattered straws and loose ends–that the police couldn’t manage themselves.
He keys in Yosuke’s cell phone number, thumb clicking the call button before his mind catches up to his hands and the potential consequences of ringing up someone at quarter to one in the morning. Best case scenario, heartbeat thrumming in his throat to the ring tone tinny in his ear, he doesn’t pick up. Worst case, there isn’t time for it when when ring tones turn to shuddery exhalations.
“Hey.” Souji manages, quiet and grave, voice level as if he wasn’t calling at an ungodly hour with nothing but the faintest outline of a good idea at the time in mind. “I was just wondering if you were doing okay.”
“Uh, yeah. It really isn’t bad.” Yosuke’s voice is thick. There’s a shuffle, the rustle of sheets and other soft things besides his heart in your cautious hands, and a cough. “I’m just kind of under the weather, that’s all. Rain, and stuff.”
It sounds like he’s been crying, and Souji is gracious enough to know when not to press further, simply, “Oh.” It seems harsh and rude to simply leave him be, after waking him at this hour. “You should get some rest, then. And drink some medicine, okay?”
“I will.” Yosuke snorts quietly into the receiver, and for the briefest of moments, Souji can imagine the other curled up with phone in hand, brow creasing in the darkness of an unlit room. Does he sleep on a futon or a bed? There’s a blank space beneath him and a cell phone tower between each ear, and for the first time in the week since he’s known the cheery second-year, the silence that falls between them is unsettling.
“I’ll call again,” he says, a plaster laid on a wound he doesn’t know how to fix.
–
It’s months, summer vacation bleeding into early autumn school trip, before the second time. Port Island is a pale reflection of the big city proper, but even a reflected light is just as bright. Everything is larger and louder here, the bass beat of the streets thrumming through the soles of Souji’s shoes. He slings an arm over the back of the couches, leatherette warm under his skin even in a half-undone shirt. Cities never sleep, and as the hour draws nearer to midnight in the club, as far as he’s concerned, they’re not going to either.
He’s got just the right tilt to his chin, and a carefully-cultivated air of confidence settled cape-like around his shoulders. Souji Seta isn’t playing at being king in this game; for all intents and purposes, he is the king and what he wants is for Yosuke to unzip himself from the binds he’s locked himself down with and join the din that’s been pulsing electric through his veins since they set foot in this place.
“Number four,” Souji says, catching and holding Yosuke’s gaze with a smirk amidst calls for hugs and lap-dances. It’s going to look awfully silly if the number on that chopstick isn’t four. “Tell the King a secret.”
Yosuke startles as if zapped by a stray bolt of lightning–score, Souji thinks–but scoots closer in spite of all his protests. Close enough to see the lashes framing his brown eyes, and to feel warm breaths tickling against the shell of his ear. Naoto’s glance is scalpel-sharp, and Rise, in all her glorious faux-drunkenness, whistles loudly.
“I’m–” He starts, halting as the thumping beat lulls between record scratches long enough for Souji to want to shake the words loose. “I’m wearing purple underwear,” he mutters, jumping to the other end of the sofa as each word was a brand, and a laugh scrunches Souji’s eyes shut in mirth.
It’s not purple but red, as they both know, red as the blush that burns lamp-like in the disco-glitter night to light up Yosuke’s cheeks.
–
“I like you,” Yosuke says, and it seems strange that the world doesn’t stop for him like it does for Souji before he launches headfirst into, “and I’m proud of you.”
Will brawling it out level the playing field so they can stand shoulder to shoulder? It might not. But it might, so Souji curls his fingers into a fist and punches him hard enough to rattle teeth. Maybe that’ll knock loose the shit Yosuke’s been talking about; he’s hoping to shake loose the noise that should fill their silences instead.
It hurts, damn it, lying on the grassy riverbank close enough to touch. Dust motes spin lazily in his gaze, remnants from the supernova smashing fist-first into his nose. There’s the taste of iron when Souji flicks a tongue against his split lips, and a soreness in his chest from more than just Yosuke’s flinty knuckles. Those very same hands open and close, restless as a caged bird, and he’s never wanted to hold someone’s hands to stillness quite as much as he does right now.
“You can have this,” Yosuke says suddenly, a bandage hitting Souji’s face with a soft pap of wrapped paper on skin. He laughs, open-mouthed with a slip of pink tongue, the sound bright as the late afternoon sun overhead. “If you start bleeding, put it on.”
Souji smiles back to keep his lips from bruising further on something, somewhere else.
–
The night before Souji leaves Inaba, it’s quiet between them once more.
With Dojima putting Nanako to bed way past her bedtime, it’s just him and Yosuke in the kitchen, picking up the pieces left behind by the Investigation team–their friends, he’s proud to say–and the party to send him off. The only sound is that of the faucet, water singing quietly as it gushes out over the plates and utensils, the melodic squeak-squeak of the sponge in Souji’s hands.
“Looking forward to going home?” Yosuke asks. “Say hi to all the, uh, all the tall buildings for me.”
Home, where kind but absent parents wait to welcome Souji back. Home, away from the backwater little town with its little shops and plethora of part-time jobs, and away from the friends he’s made over the course of one year of his life. Is it really home, if he isn’t there?
“I’m going to miss you.” His response is less an answer to Yosuke’s question, and more an admission. For a first effort, it seems a little last-ditch to spring it on him on the last bit of uninterrupted time together until who-knows-when.
“So don’t leave.”
Souji goes still, the water running over the plate in his hands. It’s a joke. It should be, but the intonation’s all wrong, steady timbre fracturing from something he can’t identify.
“Stay here.”
It doesn’t happen like it does in the movies. There are no fireworks and no sweeping orchestral scores. There’s a plate in his hands and soap suds on his wrists as all the pieces fall into place late, but better than never at all. It’s still quiet in the kitchen as Souji sets the plate back down into the water, silently to keep from breaking the spell, and closes his fingers tight around Yosuke’s upper arm.
Souji wonders, supernova stardust in his eyes and lips bruising, if his partner minds that their teeth clack inexpertly against each other. If he’s ever been kissed–all warm and wet and maybe a little gross given the time of night–before, or if he too can feel the silence fade to the sound of two heartbeats.
From a room down the hall, Dojima calls. The water from the faucet, running merrily. He draws away slowly, reluctantly, the air thick around them like impenetrable fog and harder to breathe than the air from someone else’s mouth.
“We can Skype or something,” Souji says, smiling as Yosuke touches fingers to his lips, and goes back to washing the plates.