This Dark Inner World

[madimpossibledreamer]

Main Points:
Persona 4 Average AU
Chapter Summary: Chie gossips with Yosuke over the phone.
Word Count: 1368
Rating: gen

          “So?  What happened?” Chie asks in a harsh whisper.  He’s trying to be quiet, because there’s no way he wants his mom to catch him talking to a female friend on the phone at one in the morning, even if he texts Chie what he thinks are funny jokes at around the same time when he’s just surfing the web when he should be sleeping or doing his homework.  (Chie obviously doesn’t agree about the funniness of the jokes, given that she’d brought that up in front of Mr. Perfect Transfer Student, but then, her sense of humor is questionable on the best of days and usually involves violence of some kind.)  He’d send her awesome music or video game stuff, but she doesn’t follow any of that stuff, so it’d be wasted.  It’s a little different having an audible conversation in his room.  His dad would be worse, because he’d probably make some sort of dumb joke and give him a thumb’s up or something.  “I still haven’t forgiven you,” she adds, like that’s at all in question.
          “Yeah, yeah.”  He shrugs that off.  He’d probably end up covered in bruises or out a bunch of money in his wallet, but hey, that’s the price of having a friend like Chie and overall it’s worth it.  “So, apparently Saki-senpai hated me.”  His voice wobbles, but she doesn’t interrupt.  She knows when it’s time to get serious, honestly.  “I mean, Souji said it was just a part of her.  We got attacked again.  The weird bear-thing made us promise to figure out what was going on.”
          “Yosuke…” she whispers, sounding upset.
          “Look.”  He pulls out that same determination, because even if he’s a loudmouth the whole town hates, he’s not gonna let this go, even if it kills him.  Even if, in the end, there’s nothing he can do because he’s not worth it.  “This other world killed Saki-senpai.  And apparently, that’s not all.  Someone’s been pushing people into the TV.  It killed the announcer, too.  Someone used it as a murder weapon to kill Saki-senpai, and I…”  He gulps back the tears, fights them back because a guy doesn’t cry.  “I can’t just let that go.  I’m going to find the person, stop them from doing it again, and make them pay.  The cops can’t do anything.  If we tell them about a world inside the TV they’re just gonna laugh in our faces.  We have to do this on our own, and Souji agrees.”
          “I’m so sorry, Yosuke,” she says, and it’s like she’s reaching through the phone and holding his hand for one second.
          “M-me too,” he manages.  “Saki-senpai didn’t deserve any of this.  I keep thinking…”  He forces a smile.  “I keep thinking I’ll go to work and there she’ll be.  I’ll comfort her about finding the body, and I’ll make her day just a bit better.”  To his utter embarrassment, he can’t stop the sob that escapes his lips.  “That’s all I ever wanted to do.  I mean, sure, I wanted to date her, but I knew, deep down, she wasn’t interested.  It wouldn’t hurt to be her friend, though, right?”
          Chie hesitates for a second before responding.  “This is probably a terrible time to ask, but I never got to, so…you’re straight, then?”
          His breathing catches.  For one long instant, two, he can’t breathe.
          “Oh, god, that was so insensitive, I shouldn’t have asked—” She starts panicking.
          “No—it’s fine.  Seriously, you’ve done so much and all I’ve got to put up with is getting kicked every now and then.  It’s fine.”  He takes one shuddering breath.  Two.  “I mean, yeah, I’m pretty sure, though it’s maybe a good thing so many of you guys aren’t interested in me because I’m not sure how I’d even go about, uh.”  He hides his head in his right hand as much as he can, pulling the phone as close to his ear as he can with the other, fingers curled around it in a death grip as he tries to decide whether he wants to cry or laugh.  There’s something wrong with him.  Most of what he knows about being a guy comes from dealing with Katsuragi (who is pretty much the only good influence on his life so far, though if he doesn’t screw this up royally Souji might become another one), reading things on the internet, watching his classmates, and seeing movies and shows.  Even then, though, there tends to be a disconnect, where either his brain’s moving too fast and he blurts out something without conscious permission or he just doesn’t stop to consider someone else’s point of view.  He’s pretty sure Chie’s onto something, not that he’ll ever tell her that, about overcompensating, but he’s pretty sure the hormones he’s taking also play a role.  It’s worth it, honestly.
          “Yosuke, it doesn’t matter if you have the parts, you’d still have no idea of what to do with a girl,” she tells him bluntly, and it’s moments like these.
          “If I ever have crippling self-confidence issues, it’s all your fault,” he tells her bluntly, even as his heart swells a little. 
          “Don’t you already?” she asks, and he flinches.
          “Uh.  Yeah, actually.  That was mostly what my Shadow was talking about.”  He’s accepted that it’s part of him, now, his own crippling self-hatred, but it still hurts to discuss.
          “That’s the part I didn’t really get,” she responds, frustrated, and he rubs at his tired eyes.
          “Okay, a Shadow is basically…all these parts of yourself you deny or hate.  For you, who knows, it’s your tomboyishness, because while you like being a tomboy, you hate that everyone makes fun of you for it.  I’d guess, anyway.”  He glances over at the laptop, all the tabs open about some foreign philosopher named Jung.
          “Wait, so he saw you in a skirt?” she practically squeals into the phone, and he promptly buries the orange phone in his pillow.
          “No, thankfully,” he pulls it back to his ear when he thinks it’s safe to do so.  “My best guess is that it’s ‘cause it’s something I’ve admitted to myself and I’m working on fixing it.  And I told you, so it’s not like I’m keeping it a secret from all of Inaba, or anything.  It’s either that, or I denied it before it got to that part, and it went berserk.”
          “Would it have been so bad, though?  From the sounds of things he’s a pretty accepting guy,” Chie suggests.
          Yosuke groans, because he’s been trying to wrap his head around that idea for hours.  He might’ve told Souji he’d sleep well following the awakening of his Persona, but once the same thought had occurred to him his brain just kept turning it over and over.  “I’ve been trying to figure that out, but we’ve only known him for all of three days.  It took me a lot longer than that to realize I really, really shouldn’t tell Amagi-chan.”
          “Much as I’d like to defend Yukiko, I asked her a couple questions and I think you’re right.”  At the silence, she adds, “…Hypotheticals about some protagonist of a martial arts movie, but she actually seemed annoyed for once.  Like they were just trying to be a pervert or something.”
          “She’s been annoyed at you more than once,” Yosuke corrects absent-mindedly and ignores her choked sound in response.  “But yeah, I’d pretty much come to the same conclusion, which sucks.”
          “I mean, you’re a guy, so you don’t really have to tell her.  It’s not like you’re lying about anything,” Chie corrects.  He smiles.  She really does try.  Maybe they get along, in a weird way, because they both tend to say a lot of stupid stuff but mean well.
          “Well, I’m starting to melt into my bed, so sleep well,” he mutters and barely waits for her to wish him better dreams before he’s ending the call and falling asleep, clothes and all, splayed out over his bed.  He doesn’t even bother turning his computer off or putting it away, which makes it a miracle the next morning when he hasn’t knocked it off the bed or damaged it in some way.