[Persona 4] 29: "out of place"
30 Days, 30 Ficlets Challenge: Day 29
Prompt: out of place
Author: devotfeige
Fandom: Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 4
Warning(s): None
Pairing(s): None; Yosuke + Souji (their bromance needs some kind of special indicator, I never feel comfortable giving a yes or no answer on whether or not I'm implying anything in these)
Disclaimer: Characters aren't mine
Notes: Post-game (sort of). This isn't quite what I wanted to post for today, but it's never going to see the light of day if I don't bite the bullet and use it anyway.
He's not sure if it's the sudden, stark revelation or his own ability to work it into the form of a question that surprises himself more, but either way it's largely irrelevant in light of how the other's guarded expression surprises him most.
Souji has long perfected the art of maintaining a calm exterior in the face of adversity, but to see him actively on guard is somewhat terrifying.
"Is that the first time they've called?"
(And for a brief, blissful, horrifying moment, he hates them--)
"...since April?" Yosuke continues, over his stricken silence, "Seriously?"
There are already cracks in the mask, hairline fractures that lie in wait to shatter at the slightest ease of pressure; he can feel them buckle when he attempts to meet the other's gaze and lets his own fall away after only an instant.
"Busy," he mumbles, wondering just how many times he's repeated the words like a mantra, a prayer, over the better part of seventeen years, "...they're just busy."
Yosuke falls silent for a moment afterward, considering that feeble explanation and weighing the situation as a whole before pressing further, albeit just as quietly, "Too busy to call for an entire year?"
He's met with the full brunt of on guard in the next instant, before Souji's gaze falls away to some nondescript point in the distance again. There's no response beyond that, and finally Yosuke turns away as well.
"Jeez, partner-- I don't mean to... I just can't believe it, I guess. It seems so..." he fumbles on his search for a word, grasping aimlessly for a second or two, "--Damn it. I'm not helping, am I?"
That, at least, earns him a flicker of a smile. "Not really, no."
A thick, oppressive silence fills the air between them, Yosuke sitting on one end of the small sofa in the center of the room while Souji leans back against the door to-- (a sudden flash of realization hits him like a fucking train; Dojima-san's guest room). He doesn't look up as he reaches out, a gesture of his hand accompanying the words; "Come here."
He waits. Eventually the weight on the sofa cushion shifts, Souji taking a seat beside him and leaning forward to rest his elbows on his knees, fingers laced together and thumbs pressed against the space between his eyes. Yosuke hesitates before letting his hand rest on his friend's shoulder, holding it there for a moment before giving it a pat and letting his hand settle again.
"I didn't want this," the words are hardly audible when they come; Yosuke suspects he wasn't meant to hear them in the first place. It's that thought which keeps him from urging the other on or asking for clarification until long after the point where doing so would only be awkward. Silence weighs heavy between them yet again, Souji evidently content with keeping the rest of that thought to himself, until--
"...wasn't supposed to let it happen."
There's a break, the softest hitch in the breath that carries his voice, and when Yosuke glances over at him in response, he's covered his face in his hands. He's paralyzed by the sheer magnitude of his next decision, not acting at all until the other leans more heavily into his hands, shoulders hunched in a superficial effort of self-preservation that Yosuke recognizes too easily-- he slides his hand from its resting place around to the opposite shoulder, moving into a firm, steady hold. Souji tenses into it, at first, falling silent again before slowly folding the fingers of one hand to peer to his right, where the other is sitting.
Yosuke forces a smile to the best of his ability, left wondering if he'd failed as spectacularly as he felt when Souji only closed his visible eye and leaned a little more bonelessly into the half-embrace.
"Do you remember what we talked about... at that outlook over town, up on the hill?" He searches his memory, comes back with a number of instances on that hill, digs through them for relevance. Souji doesn't wait for him to respond, though. "About Inaba, and all the things you'd found to make you like this place?"
It's an embarrassing memory, if a fond one, "Yeah."
"I think--" Souji starts, hesitates, sighs. Leans even heavier into Yosuke's side, hands dropping into his lap. "I think the same thing happened to me."
And he wishes that he couldn't see the correlation, wishes that it felt like a non sequitur, but he understands completely. Inaba, for what it's worth, is home. Souji leaves in a little under a month; going 'home', going somewhere in the city, to a house that's hardly lived in, to stay with people who can't afford the few minutes it would take to call more than once a year--
He pulls his arm a little tighter around the other, reaches up with his free hand to loop his fingers loosely around the wrist of his opposite, and closes his eyes. "I wish you weren't going, either."
They sit together like this for some time, taking in one another's presence, memorizing the familiarity found therein. There's nothing more to say.
Prompt: out of place
Author: devotfeige
Fandom: Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 4
Warning(s): None
Pairing(s): None; Yosuke + Souji (their bromance needs some kind of special indicator, I never feel comfortable giving a yes or no answer on whether or not I'm implying anything in these)
Disclaimer: Characters aren't mine
Notes: Post-game (sort of). This isn't quite what I wanted to post for today, but it's never going to see the light of day if I don't bite the bullet and use it anyway.
He's not sure if it's the sudden, stark revelation or his own ability to work it into the form of a question that surprises himself more, but either way it's largely irrelevant in light of how the other's guarded expression surprises him most.
Souji has long perfected the art of maintaining a calm exterior in the face of adversity, but to see him actively on guard is somewhat terrifying.
"Is that the first time they've called?"
(And for a brief, blissful, horrifying moment, he hates them--)
"...since April?" Yosuke continues, over his stricken silence, "Seriously?"
There are already cracks in the mask, hairline fractures that lie in wait to shatter at the slightest ease of pressure; he can feel them buckle when he attempts to meet the other's gaze and lets his own fall away after only an instant.
"Busy," he mumbles, wondering just how many times he's repeated the words like a mantra, a prayer, over the better part of seventeen years, "...they're just busy."
Yosuke falls silent for a moment afterward, considering that feeble explanation and weighing the situation as a whole before pressing further, albeit just as quietly, "Too busy to call for an entire year?"
He's met with the full brunt of on guard in the next instant, before Souji's gaze falls away to some nondescript point in the distance again. There's no response beyond that, and finally Yosuke turns away as well.
"Jeez, partner-- I don't mean to... I just can't believe it, I guess. It seems so..." he fumbles on his search for a word, grasping aimlessly for a second or two, "--Damn it. I'm not helping, am I?"
That, at least, earns him a flicker of a smile. "Not really, no."
A thick, oppressive silence fills the air between them, Yosuke sitting on one end of the small sofa in the center of the room while Souji leans back against the door to-- (a sudden flash of realization hits him like a fucking train; Dojima-san's guest room). He doesn't look up as he reaches out, a gesture of his hand accompanying the words; "Come here."
He waits. Eventually the weight on the sofa cushion shifts, Souji taking a seat beside him and leaning forward to rest his elbows on his knees, fingers laced together and thumbs pressed against the space between his eyes. Yosuke hesitates before letting his hand rest on his friend's shoulder, holding it there for a moment before giving it a pat and letting his hand settle again.
"I didn't want this," the words are hardly audible when they come; Yosuke suspects he wasn't meant to hear them in the first place. It's that thought which keeps him from urging the other on or asking for clarification until long after the point where doing so would only be awkward. Silence weighs heavy between them yet again, Souji evidently content with keeping the rest of that thought to himself, until--
"...wasn't supposed to let it happen."
There's a break, the softest hitch in the breath that carries his voice, and when Yosuke glances over at him in response, he's covered his face in his hands. He's paralyzed by the sheer magnitude of his next decision, not acting at all until the other leans more heavily into his hands, shoulders hunched in a superficial effort of self-preservation that Yosuke recognizes too easily-- he slides his hand from its resting place around to the opposite shoulder, moving into a firm, steady hold. Souji tenses into it, at first, falling silent again before slowly folding the fingers of one hand to peer to his right, where the other is sitting.
Yosuke forces a smile to the best of his ability, left wondering if he'd failed as spectacularly as he felt when Souji only closed his visible eye and leaned a little more bonelessly into the half-embrace.
"Do you remember what we talked about... at that outlook over town, up on the hill?" He searches his memory, comes back with a number of instances on that hill, digs through them for relevance. Souji doesn't wait for him to respond, though. "About Inaba, and all the things you'd found to make you like this place?"
It's an embarrassing memory, if a fond one, "Yeah."
"I think--" Souji starts, hesitates, sighs. Leans even heavier into Yosuke's side, hands dropping into his lap. "I think the same thing happened to me."
And he wishes that he couldn't see the correlation, wishes that it felt like a non sequitur, but he understands completely. Inaba, for what it's worth, is home. Souji leaves in a little under a month; going 'home', going somewhere in the city, to a house that's hardly lived in, to stay with people who can't afford the few minutes it would take to call more than once a year--
He pulls his arm a little tighter around the other, reaches up with his free hand to loop his fingers loosely around the wrist of his opposite, and closes his eyes. "I wish you weren't going, either."
They sit together like this for some time, taking in one another's presence, memorizing the familiarity found therein. There's nothing more to say.