A lot of horrible things happen quietly. Like when Teddie vanished way back when Nanako had been in the hospital, and his first thought was that the stupid bear was goofing off while important things were happening. It took a few hours for the churning feeling in his gut to build up, not because anything had happened, but because nothing happened to reassure him that Teddie was all right.
Or when Chie's dog suddenly just fell asleep and died one night, and Yosuke found out when he checked his text messages in the bathroom in between classes, completely expecting a text from Chie to be about how bad the food was at Junes.
And maybe his feelings toward Yu were like that, something which had been perfect one day, then (without fanfare, without a set place and time) something he discovered to be muddled and sour a month later.
But when it comes to everything blowing up in your face—that takes a spark.
One day, a crash came from the living room.
Yosuke had been in the middle of the completely dumb task of crawling the internet in search of answers to why the refrigerator seemed to only work half the time (leaving them with a lot of spoiled food, which Yu seemed strangely insistent upon eating anyway) when he heard something thud to the floor. And then a second, with the sound of something hard breaking.
Yosuke ran down the stairs to find Tomo balancing on the wall shelf and a pair of picture frames lying on the ground below. The cat looked at him calmly as if it wasn't particularly doing anything wrong.
"Seriously!?" That fucking cat. Up until now it had just gotten on his nerves and jumped him in the night, but now it was breaking their stuff? With a sinking feeling, he bent down to pick the frames back up to see how bad it was. The glass on one of them had fractured, sending a spiderweb of cracks across Teddie's face in a picture of the three of them at Junes, when Teddie had finally decided to stay in Inaba instead of following them. If the break had been an inch to the right, it would've separated himself and Yu in some perfectly symbolic cheesy way. But instead, it was just a broken picture frame that had felt important to him and that was worse somehow, made him feel like it was really just another thing in his dumb insignificant life that this cat shat all over in any way it pleased.
Tomo observed him stoically. Like it didn't even care.
Something in him snapped. Before he knew entirely what he was doing, he had sprang back up to his full height and shot one hand out to grab the cat. Apparently caught off guard, Tomo dodged a little too late and Yosuke grabbed hold of a hind leg; instantly, Tomo arced around and clamped its teeth down onto his wrist and he hissed shit in surprise because the thing had never bitten him this hard before. He grabbed the back of its neck with his other hand and wrested his right hand free, its teeth and claws scraping a trail down to his knuckles. Tomo flailed and jolted in his grip, much more than just its nine pounds of bone and muscle, lashing its claws dangerously and hissing and growling, an animal out to kill. Yosuke held it as far away from his body as possible while keeping its face toward him.
"What the hell!" Yosuke yelled. "You don't do that!" He would've shaken it a bit if it weren't already so hard to keep his grip on the seizing and spitting creature. "You listen to me! Stop attacking me! Stop breaking our shit! Just stop! Stop being such a horrible little—"
Yosuke wasn't sure there was a word capable of describing what Tomo was just then. His words stuttered to a stop and instead he made a sound of rage. Tomo caught his sleeve with one claw, and he found his words again. "Stop it! Fuck! Let go, dammit!"
"Yosuke? What are you doing?" came Yu's voice in disbelief. Yosuke turned around to find Yu at the base of the stairs, still wearing his reading glasses, stunned at the sight before him. In that moment, Tomo jerked sharply and dropped from Yosuke's grip, clambering cartoonishly into a sharp turn to dive behind the sofa. "What were you doing!?" Yu repeated more forcefully as he came forward, a dark look crossing his face—a protective look, the look he'd given Namatame when his arm was around Nanako's throat, except this time it was meant to protect Tomo from Yosuke and that made him feel sick inside.
"What am I doing? Your cat broke our shit and mauled me!" Yosuke said indignantly, showing Yu the bleeding cuts across the back of his hand.
The dark look ebbed from Yu's face, and for a moment Yosuke thought he was going to acknowledge that Yosuke was the victim here and something needed to be done. Instead, Yu said, "Don't grab him like that," like it was completely obvious that Yosuke had brought on his own misfortune.
"What the hell, man? 'Don't grab him'? He was knocking stuff to the floor, what was I supposed to do!? Let it and pet it for being such a good boy!?"
Yu pressed his lips together. "I mean that mistreating him won't accomplish anything."
"I'm bleeding and you're still siding with the cat. I can't believe you. What the fuck!"
"I'm not—" Yu broke off with a sigh and took off his glasses, rubbing at one eye with the heel of his hand. "I'm not taking sides. I'm just saying, he's a cat. You've got to understand that."
"Me!? I know it's a goddamn cat, what about you? I keep telling you to control it and you never listen!"
Yu's eyes turned from tired to chilly. His finger closed where he held his glasses tightly by one end. "We can't talk like this."
"Yeah, you're right! You're completely right about that! It's impossible to talk to you once you're doing the..."—Yosuke made a meaningless gesture—"the thing where you're angry and that makes you super reasonable. Fuck!" Yosuke shoved past Yu to storm up the stairs.
"Where are you going?" Yu said too calmly.
"Getting my fucking mp3 player, why do you care!"
Yu stayed silent as Yosuke retrieved his music player and shoved his headphones over his head, beyond caring about whether he bled all over them and the table. Yu was still at the bottom of the stairs with his arms crossed, looking in the direction of the sofa—thinking about Tomo no doubt—as Yosuke stormed back down.
"And you're still worried about the cat," Yosuke muttered as he passed.
"You should rinse that out," Yu said, glancing at the bleeding hand he had over his headphones. Somehow, rather than feeling touched, that just really ticked him off.
"Maybe you should make your cat less vicious."
"Tomo acts out against you because you've given him absolutely no reason to like you," he said tersely.
"Great! Still my fault for being a loser." Yosuke just barely stopped himself from grabbing his nice coat with his bloody hand. He made for the kitchen to grab a towel, hating every moment he gave Yu to keep arguing with him.
"Yosuke," Yu sighed, like it should have preceded Stop being such a child or It's not all about you or something else Yu was too nice to say but was definitely thinking right then, thoughts made plain in the tone of a single word.
It should have been unfair to be angry with Yu for things he hadn't even said, but after enough time knowing him, it really wasn't. It was never anything that Yu said that pissed him off, it was more about the entire way he acted at times like these. Aloof, above something so hot-headed and stupid as a lover's spat, completely in the right because he wasn't the one yelling. Kind of like his cat, coming to think of it.
No, it was completely fair to be angry at Yu because it was his fault in the first place and he kept pretending it wasn't.
Yosuke located a towel and gave his hand a quick rinse under the sink—kind of hating that the obvious thing to do was something Yu had claimed for himself as his advice—before wrapping the towel around it, clamping his fingers down on it to keep it in place, and stomping back to the front door. Yu kept watching him from that same spot by the base of the stairs, not saying anything, not arguing, just judging him silently. With his coat shrugged on and a hand on the doorknob, Yosuke found the courage to say, in a voice much less forceful than he'd imagined, "I don't want that cat in my house," before walking out and slamming the door behind him.
The cold fall night air hit his face as he stuffed his headphones over his ears, found the most angry metal song he had, and blasted it at full volume. He felt seventeen again. It wasn't entirely a bad feeling.
He crossed his arms and started to walk down the sidewalk, not caring where he was going. He had taken a lot of walks like these when he was younger, but it had been awhile since he felt like he needed to escape the house for awhile. What a horrible start to their new life together.
A middle-aged woman was walking toward him on the sidewalk. She must've heard the music leaking from his headphones. She took one look at his towel-wrapped hand and crossed the street, obviously trying to look discreet about it. Fuck her too, Yosuke thought. Probably the gossiping housewife type. Looks judgmental. Great. Wonder when they'll catch onto the fact that we're two men living together.
Screw Yu coming in and ruining his life. Screw him and the cool way he could deal with everything. Screw him always thinking he's right.
Honestly, sometimes Yosuke had no idea why he ever liked the guy.
Eventually—still in the middle of plenty of unkind thoughts toward Yu, Tomo, and himself—he reached the end of the sidewalk, at a T-shaped intersection with a minor highway. Against all reason, he thought to himself that it was kind of a shitty end to the sidewalk. Back in Inaba, if you went far enough in any direction, you'd either hit a hill with trees and benches, or you'd end up at the Samegawa. Both were pretty good places to mope. But he supposed that in this unfamiliar place he'd have to learn where everything was, and until then he was stuck here at a dead end with nowhere to sit down and the intermittent passing car to intrude upon his privacy.
For a few minutes he just watched the cars pass. The metal singer's growling voice was still screaming something in English that Yosuke had never bothered to look up. He didn't really care what it meant, just that it sounded like how he felt when he was angry. By now all of his meaningful angry thoughts had run their course, and his mind was stuck endlessly repeating the same couple of moments that upset him the most.
The look on Yu's face when he said what were you doing.
The way he said Yosuke, just the tone of it, the last thing he said before Yosuke left the house.
One from long ago: You seem to have some objections to... I just mean, if this isn't what you want, I don't want to force you into anything.
Yu had given him an out. Yu knew you shouldn't charge ahead with doubts eating at the back of your mind, and Yosuke had just laughed it off and said it didn't mean anything.
It actually ate a lot at him. He just didn't want to let Yu go.
Because he loved the bastard, despite everything.
And since Yosuke was frequently stricken with doubt over the dumbest things, he always figured that mattered more.
And now that he thought about it, he really should've made his feelings clear about the cat in a serious way before just exploding at Yu like that. And by now, Yu had probably calmed down (for real) and maybe he'd realized that he had been dismissing and ignoring Yosuke. Or maybe Yosuke ought to explain that to him, if he hadn't realized—awkward and dumb and girly as it sounded... on second thought, he hoped Yu realized it himself, like he usually did, because Yosuke could think of no way to explain it that wasn't hopelessly awkward and dumb and girly.
That moment of perfect clarity—where it seemed like all his problems had been amazingly simple and that he could fix them all—abruptly passed, and once again he was standing at an intersection, staring at cars and listening to teenager music and hating every stupid hangup he'd ever had.
He felt useless being out here, and he did feel less angry at least, so he pressed stop on his music player, turned around, and started to head home.
Although he didn't think it would be easy, he still did think that he and Yu could work things out when he got back. Yosuke had at least made it clear how he felt about the cat. By now it had probably sunk in for Yu, and although Yosuke didn't think he'd be lucky enough to be rid of the thing, maybe Yu would start taking discipline seriously.
...Or something. Yosuke would have taken any sign that things would change and that Yu still cared for him as much as before.
His fingers were starting to feel stiff from holding the towel in place. He unwound it to inspect the wound. The bleeding had slowed to a trickle, but the wounds were raised and swollen and didn't look like they were going to go away cleanly. It would also be nice, Yosuke thought, if Yu acted like he cared about his hand getting cut into ribbons. The cold air felt kind of nice against his hot and itchy skin, so he let the towel dangle from his good hand on the way back.
When he got back home—that little house looking so new and sweet with warm lamplight glowing through the drawn curtains on the first floor—he didn't know what to expect if he opened the door. But a tired sense of calm had set in. As if his body moved by itself, he tried the door handle and found it unlocked. He stepped back into his house.
He saw Yu on the couch with Tomo on his lap. At the sight of Yosuke, Tomo leapt to the floor and went back behind the sofa. Yu didn't meet his eyes.
All at once, Yosuke didn't feel like he had the energy to try talking to Yu. Instead, he went upstairs and showered by himself, bandaged his hand by himself, and fell into their bed by himself. He discovered that when it came to Yu in the flesh and not Yu in his mind, Yosuke was still angry at him, and he even considered locking the bedroom door to demonstrate that point. But in the end, when he got up to turn off the lights, he decided that Yu could come apologize if he wanted to.
By the time he woke up to his alarm in the morning, he was still alone in the room.
