Disclaimer: Apologies for radio silence followed by posting in a category new to me. No one should have loaned me this game. It ate me. That seems to happen a lot. Have a story!
This is probably not actually in the timeline. I don't actually own this game, so I couldn't check, and anyway I REALLY wanted Teddie in here. I like Teddie. I think this IS in December sometime. (If I'm incoherent here it's cause I REALLY need to sleep).
With A Little Help From My Friends
"Yosuke?"
Ignore him, just ignore him and go to sleep.
"Yoooooosuuuuke."
What in the world had ever made Yosuke think letting Teddie share his room could ever be a good idea? When Ted wasn't actually trying to crawl in bed with him, despite Yosuke's repeated attempts at explaining why he couldn't do that, he spent all his time keeping Yosuke awake.
All right, so Yosuke still got more sleep these days than he had before Ted moved in. So at least wasn't up late at night, alone and lonely, staring at the ceiling and mentally running over everything that could go wrong the next day in his head. Sure he was still awake, but he wasn't alone.
And no one but Teddie and Souji knew why he'd been so willing to have Teddie come stay at his place. Yosuke wanted it to stay that way.
"Yo, Yosuke!"
Giving it up, he groaned and threw his pillow, hitting Teddie in the head on the first try. (The first few nights he'd knocked things off the shelves instead). "What Ted!"
"I can't sleep," Teddie announced, propping himself on his elbows on the futon they'd wrestled into the room for him after the last time he'd tried to share Yosuke's. There was actually a spare room Ted was welcome to use but he'd never stayed in there very long.
Yosuke rolled over and propped himself up as well, his shadow merging with Teddie's. "Neither can I, 'cause you won't shut up, man." There was no bite in his words.
"I'm bored! Let's go somewhere!"
"It's after midnight!"
"It's Sunday!"
A few minutes of arguing, a couple of thrown shoes, and a frantic shuffle for suitable (warm) clothes later, Yosuke found himself outside the house with Teddie.
"Ted, it's freezing out here. Where are we... Ted! Get back here!"
Apparently having known where he wanted to go all along, Teddie was down the street like a shot. Yosuke darted after him, warmed by the exertion by the time he caught up. Teddie slowed down and they walked down the middle of the street without speaking, the only sound that of their sneakers slapping against the blacktop. Yosuke supposed he should have asked Ted where he was so eager to go at this time of night.
He didn't.
Instead he fingered the glasses he kept in his pocket, had kept near his bed while sleeping for all these past months, and drew them out and put them on. The fog fell away, leaving the town as brightly lit as it ever was now that he could see where the beams from the streetlights fell. It was surreal, to know that only he and Teddie and the other Investigation Team members could see through the fog. It made him feel more attached to the usually sleepy little town- made him feel like he had a responsibility to it.
Once in a while he heard other footsteps echo distantly in the fog. In the city, that would have worried him. Here, it didn't. Besides- they could escape into the fog itself if they really had to. Eventually Teddie started talking again, a stream-of-consciousness chatter that Yosuke listened to without really hearing until he looked around and realised with a start that they were at the banks of the Samegawa.
They weren't the only ones there, either.
"Hey, partner!" Yosuke lifted a hand and shouted. The figure at the dock turned to look at them, shielding his eyes and squinting, and Yosuke saw that he had his glasses on too.
Souji smiled and waved, then turned his attention back to his fishing line as the bobber went under. By the time Yosuke and Teddie had scrambled down the hill to join him he was adding yet another fish to the ones he'd already caught.
"You should be asleep, Sensei," Teddie said, trying for a reproachful tone and failing.
Souji's lips curved in an almost-smile. "So should you both."
"Ted here couldn't sleep, so he dragged me out of bed to go gallivanting with him," Yosuke said, wrapping his arms around himself and shivering. It really was cold out here.
Souji noticed. He stood up, stretched, and started packing his fishing gear away. "I was just about done fishing, anyway. So long as we're all here, why don't we move to the shrine? It'll be warmer."
"Yeah," Yosuke agreed, stretching himself. "That sounds like a plan. Seems like we're not the only ones in Inaba with insomnia lately- I keep hearing others out here."
"Others like us?"
"Kanji!" Yosuke looked away from Souji just in time to see Teddie fling himself at Kanji, who was sitting in the shrine with Naoto. The detective was clearly trying not to laugh as Kanji ruffled Teddie's hair and then gruffly shoved the blonde away, fighting down a blush.
"You guys couldn't sleep either, huh?" Yosuke asked sympathetically, taking a seat beside Souji. Teddie immediately claimed Yosuke's other side, pressing far closer than personal space allowed. Yosuke didn't particularly mind; he craved physical contact at the best of times, and Teddie was a special exception to personal space, anyway. The whole team let him get away with things they'd throttle each other for.
Naoto sighed. "I dislike having to admit it, but... not for days now."
"But we can all be awake together!" Teddie said enthusiastically, shouldering people aside and shoving them into each other until the five of them were huddled into an awkward ball of warmth on the shrine steps instead of simply seated near each other.
They all could have moved again, of course, reinstated their own little bubbles of space. No one did, not even Naoto. Teddie seemed to know they could all use the comfort.
Sometimes Yosuke wondered how much Teddie really understood about the way the world worked. More and more often recently Ted's more simplistic view of relationships seemed the only real way to consider them.
"Uh," Kanji's voice said from somewhere in the middle of the huddle. "Now what?"
Yosuke ducked his head into Souji's shoulder as Teddie leaned heavily against him. "I want to count the stars!"
"You're welcome to try," Yosuke laughed.
"Okay! There's one! There's another! That one makes three! There's-"
"There's the Canis Major constellation," Souji's soft voice cut him off.
Teddie leaned back too far to try and see it and ended up windmilling his arms until Yosuke, Kanji and Souji reached out and hauled him back upright. Naoto was studying the sky instead. Yosuke wasn't sure why until the detective quietly said, "There's Orion," and pointed.
"I wish I knew the stories behind the constellations better," Kanji mumbled.
"Let's make up our own," Souji suggested, and a change in his voice made Yosuke turn and look at him. Sure enough, Souji was smiling, really smiling, for the first time that night. "It's more fun that way anyway."
"Oh! Oh! Can we make up our own constellations too? I wanna have a Great Bear constellation!"
"That already exists, dumbass, it's called Ursa Major." Kanji's slow swipe came nowhere near actually hitting Teddie. "You can see it in the spring."
"But I wanna constellation noooow!"
"Fine, we'll call that cluster of stars over there Teddie," Naoto compromised.
"Awesome! Wait, though, those don't look like a bear. At all."
"Well, no, they look like a cluster of stars," Yosuke agreed. "Use your imagination, Ted."
"Okay!" Teddie bounced back immediately. "Then that group over there can be Yosuke! And that one can be Sensei!"
"Uh, Teddie? That's the moon."
"I know! It's the biggest and the brightest!"
"Hey, are you calling the rest of us dumb?" Yosuke shouldered Teddie playfully.
"Or are you calling me fat?" Souji added.
"There's more of you to love, Sensei! Sensei? Don't throw fish at me, Sensei! That's not nice!"
A brief fish-battle and several bouts of laughter later, they found themselves all sprawled out behind the shrine.
"Now I'm tired," Teddie announced.
"We can't sleep here," Naoto said, disbelieving.
"Why not?"
"Uh, because it's cold?" Yosuke suggested.
"Everybody shift in then!"
To Yosuke's surprise, everyone did as Teddie said. It was actually warmer than his room had been that way, largely because they were all overlapping on each other with the way they were sprawled.
"I'm sleeping here," Souji declared, and to Yosuke's surprise he realised it was Souji and not Teddie using his chest for a pillow. That was probably Teddie curled up at his side with his back to him, then.
"Not like anyone's ever even gonna notice us back here, 'specially with the fog. And Ma knows I go out early all the time. She'll never know I wasn't home."
No, that was Kanji beside him. That was Teddie draped over his legs.
Yosuke kind of felt like he should object to being a pillow for too many people at once, but he was too comfortable (and warm) to care very much.
Teddie was the first to fall asleep, but it wasn't long before the rest of them followed him into slumber.
In the morning they woke to muffled giggles, clicking and flashing, and three muffled voices.
They'd all forgotten that Chie, Yukiko and Rise could see through the fog, too.