One Way to Start the Morning
A fill for the P4 kinkmeme by Otte
Yosuke had a few habits and things he didn't like to tell people about. For example, he avoided ever confessing to the various sappy female vocalists crammed behind the more respectable CDs on his shelf. Another thing he'd never tell anybody was his habit of keeping a journal – a journal, dammit, not a diary.
One thing he also kept quiet was the fact he started every morning at 5AM sharp, and then went for a run in his tracksuit, with his headphones firmly clamped around his ears. Nobody ever suspected Yosuke Lazy-Ass Hanamura of having any intention of ever waking up before he absolutely had to, or of doing anything beyond his half-hearted PE attempts by way of exercise, but ever since they began fighting the Shadows, Yosuke had felt the need to do something to keep himself fit. When you had guys like Kanji and Souji fighting alongside you all the time, any feeling of being too scrawny and weak was amplified a million times over. It got especially bad when Chie, a girl about half a foot shorter than you, could probably kick you half way across Inaba and back without breaking a sweat.
There was that, and there was the fact that when he took his morning run, he could clear his head. He wanted to do that a lot lately, about a lot of things. He could put on some good music, and just run mindlessly until it got about time to sneak back into the house and start getting ready for school, or he could think things over, about the case, about Saki-senpai, about his best friend, about just his life in general. He never reached any real conclusion, but he was glad for the time to pretend he knew what he was doing, and that he wasn't shit-scared and self-conscious and generally lame. He could reach resolutions he had no intentions of following through, and they made him feel briefly better, briefly more like he had everything sorted out.
The run this morning, he decided, was definitely a thinking-run, even when he didn't want it to be. He would much prefer just having his mind completely empty, but he just couldn't clear the thoughts away. The cold nipped at his skin, and the dampness of the mist had sunk through his shirt already. His feet beat steadily down on the pavement and a familiar song pulsed through his ears. He'd struggled to get to sleep last night, when his brain was utterly determined to keep him awake with several uncomfortable thoughts, and these thoughts had permeated his dreams, stayed with him until he'd woken up the next morning hoping to finally think about something else.
Something other than Souji goddamn Seta.
He quickened his pace, hoping to beat the thoughts out of his mind with exhaustion, running across the floodplain, the air struggling to meet his lungs fast enough as he sped up even more. A pain shot across his waist and he stopped, gasping for breath and his hand resting on the source of the pain. He swallowed and stood up straight, feeling dizzy and stupid, and ready to vomit. Damnit, Hanamura, why did you think that would help?
He then noticed a figure sat on a bench nearby, staring at him intently. He straightened up very suddenly, a rush of embarrassment sweeping across him. The figure was wearing baggy jeans and a red hoodie, with the hood up. There were some black hair crowding their face, and he got the weird feeling they'd been staring at him for a while. He pulled the headphones from his ears and rested them around his neck as they opened their mouth.
"Yosuke-kun?" the figure said in a soft, familiar voice.
"Huh? Y-yukiko-san?" he stammered, taken aback. He took a few steps towards the figure, and she looked at him from under the hood. It was undeniably Yukiko under the huge hoodie and filthy jeans (Jeans. Jeans. He didn't even know Yukiko owned jeans), and she rubbed her face and looked at him with a tight, controlled smile.
"Yosuke-kun, what're you doing?" she said.
"Uh. I think that's what I'm supposed to ask here," he said, baffled. It was only then he noticed the lack of make-up on her face. He'd never seen her without make-up on before. Hell, Chie was just about the only girl he'd seen without make-up on. Without the lipstick and the eye-liner and all the other crap he didn't know the names of, she looked very...different. Not bad, he thought with some degree of surprise, not bad, really. He'd barely really noticed it, and it made him stupidly wonder why girls wore the stuff so obsessively in the first place.
He sat down next to her, giving her another scrutinising look, taking in the unkempt hair, the crinkled, unfeminine clothes, the plain, unpainted face, with its light dapple of spots around the forehead, the faint dark circles under her eyes. Yosuke was suddenly weirdly aware that Yukiko was a person. Girls were people. Even hot ones, huh, great discovery, Hanamura.
"St-stop staring at me!" she snapped abruptly, "Sorry, I look awful."
"You look fine to me," he said incredulously. She sighed and stared back her hands. Her fingers were knitted tightly in her lap, and there was a faint strain across her face, as if she was holding something back, like words, or tears.
They lapsed into silence.
Yosuke awkwardly tried to sort out what he wanted to say, and vaguely wishing he'd just jogged on and pretended not to notice her. It wasn't like they spent a lot of time together by themselves – Chie or Souji were always there as well to serve as a buffer between them. The only time they'd talked alone before when he'd first came to Inaba and stupidly taken the Amagi Challenge – and Yukiko had blithely shot him down without even seeming to be aware what he was doing.
In hindsight, he didn't know how else it could have gone, and he hoped it wasn't a memory particularly clear to her. He wouldn't take the Amagi Challenge again – sure, she was really hot, and he'd even seen her in a bikini to confirm this, but he didn't want to go out with her. He didn't want to have sex with her. Yosuke Hanamura, not wanting to have sex with a hot girl. First time for everything.
He hesitated to call it "maturity". Maybe it was, maybe it was because there was something else going on.
"Chie's going out with Kou after school today," Yukiko blurted out all of a sudden. Yosuke turned her head to look at her.
"Oh yeah. I forgot those two were going out. What, three weeks now?" he said dimly. She nodded.
"Ha. Well I never thought she'd get a boyfriend before you did, Yukiko-san," he said with a cheery grin. She fidgeted and winced visibly, and he knew that was the wrong thing to say. He scraped his mind for a way to rescue himself.
"I just mean! I mean...I thought she would be a dyke, you know?" Yukiko drew a breath, sharp and fast and hard, and he knew that again he'd chosen the precisely wrong thing to say yet again.
"Well. You know. Just with the short hair and acting like a guy...and the critical hits to the nads, And I always thought Kou was kinda funny as well I mean..." he continued. His brain was begging his mouth to stop moving, but they had seemed to take on a life of their own, and were determined to keep saying words when he was desperate to try and get his own blabbering back under control. It never ended well when he just started mouthing off, and he was pretty bad at getting himself to shut up when he started getting stupid and nervous.
Thankfully, Yukiko intercepted before he could dig his grave any deeper.
"Yosuke-kun, did you really think....?" she asked, her hands clasped tightly in her lap and a tense, sad expression on her face Yosuke couldn't put a name to.
"Uh. What're you doing out here anyway?" he said, clumsily dodging around the question.
"I kept waking up, I just needed some fresh air," Yukiko said slowly, biting down on her fingernails anxiously. Yosuke snorted and shoved his hands into the pockets of his jacket, and leaned back on the bench.
"Yeah, me too," he said with a sigh, stretching out his aching legs. The morning light was trying to seep through the cold and darkness, but was masked by the mist and slowly building fog. He didn't know how any of them could sleep with the fog building up; he wondered if Souji was awake already. He probably got up stupidly early, plotting out their movements for the next few days or getting some studying in before school. It was something he would do, because he knew exactly what he was doing. He had everything sorted.
Damn, he had a really one-track mind. He couldn't help it. There was no way of denying that Souji was pretty much the most important person in his life. That was a stupid, embarrassing thought, and nothing he would ever be able to verbalise without wanting Chie to Galactic Punt him to another planet straight afterwards.
Besides that, it was stupid. Souji was his best friend, sure, but Souji was friends with nearly everybody in Inaba, and he must be dating just about half the girls at school. Everybody loved him. He was jealous, of Souji, of other people near Souji, even when he knew he shouldn't. Damn, half the time he couldn't tell whether he wanted to be Souji or if he was...what the hell was he thinking!? He refused to finish that thought.
"Souji-kun is out with Ai this afternoon, isn't he?" Yukiko said, and he jumped. He yawned nonchalantly.
"No idea. Probably. Her or Yumi at the minute, right?" he replied, unable to keep the gloom out of his voice. He rescued it with his best, cheekiest grin and added, "Hey, since they're busy, me and you should get together don't you think?"
He didn't know why he said it. Yukiko rolled her eyes, and didn't even attempt to hide it. He fidgeted, and wished not for the first time that it was possible to unsay something.
"I'd rather not," she said, then sighed and rested her chin on her hands, hiding her pale cheeks behind her fingers then murmured so low Yosuke only barely caught it, "I shouldn't be jealous, should I? Chie's happy."
He blinked in surprise.
"Woah, you got a thing for Kou or something? Didn't think he'd be your type," he said in surprise. Yukiko paused, and then shook her head miserably, sinking inward like a turtle retracting into its shell. She tucked her hands into her sleeves, and folded them across her chest, shivering a little in the cold.
Yosuke's eyes widened as something clicked in the back of his mind – so if it wasn't Kou she liked it must be...what, no way. There was no chance that was it. Yukiko wasn't...like that, she was so girly. There was just no way, he was being stupid again. Sure...that stuff about Chie being a prince had been a little suspicious, but girls were just weird like that sometimes. It wasn't like that for them. Shadows said all sorts of crazy crap. Yeah, it was true, but it was also blown crazy out of proportion...like, alright, Kanji was pretty bent, but he wasn't as outright flaming as his Shadow. That kind of thing.
He laughed nervously.
"Ha. Wow, Yukiko-san. You'd think...haha," he said, flushing and stumbling over his words awkwardly, trying to shove the image out of his mind. He knew it wasn't the right thing to say, he knew he should say something encouraging or sympathetic, like a real friend would, but all he could do was laugh and then say, "Man, you're oblivious."
"Oblivious?" she repeated, raising an eyebrow at him. He laughed a bit more, and it sounded horribly fake and awkward even to him.
"Yeah. Right. You're making it sound like...like you like Chie or something. Stupid, right?" he said, grinning. Yukiko swallowed and looked away, and Yosuke's stomach dropped unpleasantly as he realised he was exactly right. Why did he have to choose now to be right about something?
He fidgeted, and fought with the desire to find an excuse to run off and go home. He knew the first thing he'd do would be panic and call Souji, or text everybody in his phone book (all twelve of them), "Yukiko's a dyke! Yukiko's a dyke! The Amagi Challenge is impossible!".
No, he couldn't do that. He didn't want to be that guy anymore.
Besides, Souji would be so epically pissed with him if he did. Instead he swallowed and remained sat down, wishing more than anything he'd just kept running instead of diving head-first into the most awkward conversation in the history of conversations. This was something that Souji should deal with, or one of those crappy girly magazines should deal with. Like most things, it was not something Yosuke would be any good at dealing with.
"Well. That's...kinda weird," he said awkwardly. He wondered if there was a world record for the highest number of doing things completely wrong in a conversation, and he suspected that if there was he'd beaten it three times over already.
Yukiko's shoulders were shaking, and there was a painful, agonised twist in her expression. She cover her face with her hands, massaging around the eyes with her fingers, and immediately Yosuke began to panic. He twisted his headphone cord around his wrists again and again, desperately searching for the right thing to say.
She looked at him, with a dry face, to Yosuke's immeasurable relief, and bit down on her lip. Finally, she mumbled something and looked down at her fingers again. He was fairly sure he'd heard right, but it was still incredibly weird to hear said out loud, and it resonated with him way more than it should - "I'm in love with my best friend".
He stood up so fast that he tripped straight over his feet and planted his face into the ground.
"Snrk."
He lifted his head as Yukiko's manic laughter filled his ears, so loud it actually sent birds flying out of the nearby trees. She offered him no assistance as he attempted to get back on his feet, his face reddening, simply clutched her stomach as she laughed even harder at the expression on his face, squeezing her eyes tight shut to fight the tears threatening to start rolling down her face. He scrambled up to sit on the bench again and wiped himself down, then waited for Yukiko's laughter to fade away.
She buried her mouth with a hand and took in a slow breath, stifling the hysteria to fading giggles, and then looked at him with a smile – a real one, not that weird, fake Amagi Inn smile she usually used. He couldn't help but grin awkwardly back, despite the horror his latest revelation had brought him. Damnit, the thought was in his head now, or at least it'd been pulled to forefront of his mind. He thought maybe that it'd been there for...months, maybe. Oh, hell, there was something really the matter with him. It shouldn't make that much sense.
It was Yukiko's fault, really. She looked at him, looking solemn and sober again, as if she hadn't just been laughing like a little hyena.
"My fault?" she asked. He blinked...that wasn't supposed to be out-loud. It was gonna be something that went straight into the "things he didn't tell people about" category if it was the same kind of thing Yukiko had – which he was sure it wasn't. 99% sure. 90%...75%...about half sure that it wasn't the same thing. Partner was his best friend, loads of books and websites and crap for teenagers said it was easy to mistake friendship for...gay...stuff. It didn't mean anything, he was sure.
"Uh. Forget it, nevermind," he said, and stood up, then looked at his watch...which he wasn't wearing, "Right. Right, it's about time for me to head back."
Yukiko stood up, and held her hands daintily in front for her. Her elegant movements and postures looked really, really stupid when she was wearing the scruffiest pair of jeans in Inaba and a hoodie about two sizes too big, he thought wryly.
"I should as well," she said and then sighed, "Yosuke-kun...if you could...not tell anybody."
"Huh? C'mon Yukiko! Do you think I would do that?" he said, grinning and laughing. He went quiet at the dry look she gave him. Fair enough, he really wanted to run down the street screaming it at anybody who would listen. He wanted to be a big jerk and laugh at her or just completely freak out. It was, naturally, a lot easier to be a jackass than to...not, and Yosuke had a tendency to go down the easy route.
"Okay, okay, I get it, I'm a dick. But I won't, right? Trust me on this. I won't."
He left out the extra bit, the bit that went something like "cos I'm about the same", but he got the awkward feeling that Yukiko might have heard it anyway. She smiled at him kindly.
"Chie's eating with Kou again today. Do you want to get lunch together?"
About a year ago, he'd have taken the invitation the completely wrong way, but he knew for a fact it wasn't that kind of thing. Still, it beat sulking around on his own during lunchtime, obsessively checking his phone over and over for texts.
"As long as you're not talking another Mystery Food X."